MSI A88XM-E35 Motherboard Review: Micro-A88X for $68
by Ian Cutress on April 3, 2014 11:59 AM ESTScientific and Synthetic Benchmarks
2D to 3D Rendering –Agisoft PhotoScan v1.0: link
Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
Console Emulation –Dolphin Benchmark: link
At the start of 2014 I was emailed with a link to a new emulation benchmark based on the Dolphin Emulator. The issue with emulators tends to be two-fold: game licensing and raw CPU power required for the emulation. As a result, many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant post to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53; meaning that anything above this is faster than an actual Wii for processing Wii code, albeit emulated.
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 wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
Encryption –TrueCrypt v0.7.1a: link
TrueCrypt is an off the shelf open source encryption tool for files and folders. For our test we run the benchmark mode using a 1GB buffer and take the mean result from AES encryption.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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frewster - Friday, April 4, 2014 - link
The power delivery components are around the CPU socket. That heatsink is for the southbridge.trowe37 - Friday, April 4, 2014 - link
Not sure if I am correct but on the first page of the article it lists "1 x USB 3.0 Header2 x USB 3.0 Headers", however looking at the motherboard shouldn't it be "2 x USB 2.0 Headers"?
popej - Friday, April 4, 2014 - link
Isn't ALC887 7.1 channel chip?loimlo - Saturday, April 12, 2014 - link
Thanks Ian. It's refreshing to see budget MB reviews. Hope to see more H81/B85, A85/A88 boards' reviews. It's the boards that people purchase/use most, but get reviewed least.Questor - Saturday, April 12, 2014 - link
I would like to see these smaller form factor boards with more PCI-express 4x type slots, rather than the PCI slot. This MSI board is perfect in every way for an upcoming build, except for the PCI slot. It's the deal breaker.Good review, thanks for your hard work.
joe15 - Wednesday, July 2, 2014 - link
Do you know if it works fine with Ubuntu?lateuser - Monday, September 18, 2017 - link
I know I am late, but may I know what is the ideal temperature for this board? Mine averages 113 centigrade, and it appears as read in speccy, which gets me worried.