The Intel Haswell-E X99 Motherboard Roundup with ASUS, GIGABYTE, ASRock and MSI
by Ian Cutress on September 25, 2014 11:30 AM ESTGaming Benchmarks
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings.
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a benchmarking wet dream – a highly complex benchmark that can bring the toughest setup and high resolutions down into single figures. Having an extreme SSAO setting can do that, but at the right settings Sleeping Dogs is highly playable and enjoyable. We run the basic benchmark program laid out in the Adrenaline benchmark tool, and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Battlefield 4
The EA/DICE series that has taken countless hours of my life away is back for another iteration, using the Frostbite 3 engine. AMD is also piling its resources into BF4 with the new Mantle API for developers, designed to cut the time required for the CPU to dispatch commands to the graphical sub-system. For our test we use the in-game benchmarking tools and record the frame time for the first ~70 seconds of the Tashgar single player mission, which is an on-rails generation of and rendering of objects and textures. We test at 1920x1080 at Ultra settings.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
62 Comments
View All Comments
StephaneP - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
On the Intel Motherboards, there was an onboard speaker. It was useful for hearing problems with Ram, Gpu, overheat, Fan fail...I don't see any speaker on these motherboards...
R3MF - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Re: the MSI X99S SLI Plus -"This means that with a 40 PCIe lane CPU, a user has to choose between tri-GPU (x16/x16/x8) + M.2 x2 from the chipset, or 2x GPU (x16/x16) + M.2 x4. 5820K users will get M.2 x4 in any configuration (x16/x8, x8/x8/x8)."
Do I understand this to mean that the same M.2 slot will switch between PCIe 2.0 PCH lanes and PCIe 3.0 CPU lanes depending on whether the last PCIe slot is used, and that 5820K users will always get PCIe 3.0 M.2 because the last PCIEe slot is not available for use at all?
Further from this; using a 5820k can i only use two PCIe slots if I want to maintain the first slot with 16x for the GPU, or are some of the slots run from the PCH and thus not affected by this.
I quite like the idea of a single GPU system (with 3.0 16x), a PCIe USB TypeC expansion card (with 3.0 4x), and possibly a third PCIe slot for a sound card. Is that possible with this board?
Thanks, great article.
Infn - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
So purely performance-wise I still don't have much reason to upgrade from my 4.5ghz 3930K on X79. Is there anything on the horizon that will?woj666 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Nope. You hit a great sweet spot with that system. Keep upgrading your GPU and you'll last a long time.StevoLincolnite - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Might want to update this article.X79 supports 4-12 core processors rather than 4-6, that you have listed.
I.E. For example the Asus Sabertooth X79 supports the 8-core Xeon E5-2640 v2 and the 10-core Xeon E5-2650L v2 as well as the 12-core Xeon E5-2697 v2.
Granted, consumers won't be running those Xeons, but the point stands, that you're not only limited to 4-6 cores on x79.
It's ironic because ALL Sandy-Bridge-E processors were actually 8-core processors, with 2 cores disabled, which helped with cooling due to the larger die meeting with the heat spreader.
Ivy Bridge-E however Intel reduced the core count down to 6.
extide - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
Except for the 3820K, that is a native quad core die. In moving to Ivy/22nm the base die for LGA 2011 went from 4 core to 6 core, and so for Ivy E all the CPU's were based on just the low end 6 core die, vs Sandy where they needed to use the 8 core die to get 6 cores.ludikraut - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
I really hope you guys get an ASUS X99-E WS in to run through its paces. Some nice boards here, but just not in the same league feature and layout-wise.l8r)
Ian Cutress - Sunday, September 28, 2014 - link
I've made a note :) Going to try and clear the backlog so we can get some others in!Etern205 - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Sorry for the derail of this article, but has anyone notice Gigabyte also using some type of OC socket just like the Asus.http://www.legitreviews.com/gigabyte-ga-x99-soc-fo...
Ian Cutress - Sunday, September 28, 2014 - link
I have seen similar comments about this. The SOC Force LN2 board in that article is typically a limited run for extreme overclockers at GIGABYTE sponsored events. At this point we're not even sure exactly what ASUS or GIGABYTE is doing with the extra pins, or if they're doing different things with them. I have the standard SOC Force motherboard here, the one that end-users can buy, and it is using the standard X99 socket.