The Intel Haswell-E X99 Motherboard Roundup with ASUS, GIGABYTE, ASRock and MSI
by Ian Cutress on September 25, 2014 11:30 AM ESTCPU Benchmarks
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, memory subtimings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
For our tests today, it would seem that all the motherboards had some form of MultiCore Turbo, although because we are testing with a JEDEC memory kit, some are more ‘turned on’ than others. The GIGABYTE and ASUS motherboards seemed more content at stock and mid-turbo frequencies, whereas the MSI and ASRock were more aggressive.
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.
The MSI takes a commanding lead in the multi-threaded version of the test.
Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
In comparison, the ASRock wins here.
Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link
Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated for 2014 to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.
The split between MSI/ASRock against ASUS/GIGABYTE results in a one second gap in our FastStone test.
Video Conversion – Handbrake v0.9.9: link
Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. The principle today is still the same, primarily as an output for H.264 + AAC/MP3 audio within an MKV container. In our test we use the same videos as in the Xilisoft test, and results are given in frames per second.
Interestingly here the ASUS and GIGABYTE pull ahead during the low quality test, but at 4K the ASRock scores the points.
Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
MultiCore Turbo affects motherboards more in tests such as POV-Ray, and the GIGABYTE drops down here.
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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gostan - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
feel like I'm transported back to 2001good job AT!
xunknownx - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
what settings on povray is being used in this article? i would love to compare my results against theirs.todo1 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
X79 supports TRIPLE CHANNEL DDR3, not quad!I don't how it is even possible to make such a mistake?!?
tyaiyama - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
After reading the following:http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-x99-motherboard-...
Is it worth recommendation from Anadtech? Almost 1 month has passed without Asus solving the problem. What's good about this M/B unable to certain hours operations(^^)
tyaiyama - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
BTW, MSI M/B also has an issue.http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&...
Both of these M/B happened to be recommended by Anand over the other two: AsRock & Giga. What does it mean? I personally likes AsRock X99 WS which seems Asus X99-E WS w/o PLX.
Haravikk - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Is there a reason the motherboards with moulded shapes over the various I/O ports don't include the I/O shield built-in? I hate adding those damned things; seems unnecessary if your motherboard is shaped around the ports already.Oxford Guy - Saturday, October 4, 2014 - link
Power phases?Also, it seems really lazy to not check what changing the MSI load line calibration setting would actually do if changed. "This is quite odd. It would seem the efficiency of the MSI motherboard when overclocked is somehow stunted..." vdroop is supposed to be part of the Intel specification and load line calibration defeats it, right? So, it looks like there is your answer. Auto isn't the optimal setting.
Also, if you tested these motherboards in the order you reviewed the overclocking results in, you may have fatigued the chip which explains why the results kept getting worse.
woj666 - Monday, October 6, 2014 - link
Agreed, it seems very obvious that that Load Line Calibration setting of "auto" on this MSI board is in fact quite aggressive and applying vboost as described here http://www.anandtech.com/show/2404/5 and here http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/24019-load-lin...The OC section of this article is not comparing apples to apples as the default LLC settings are not the same for the different boards.
akula2 - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link
It was a great review, appreciate it very much.1) why Asus X99-E WS is missing out of action?
2) Asus X99-E WS ($510) or Asrock X99 WS ($310)?
My ten X99 ultra Workstations will have the upcoming Maxwell based Nvidia Quadro and Tesla cards? I'm also evaluating Firepro W9100 card too. I don't know if there will be Maxwell based Titan Black (II or whatever name)?
Five builds will have Xeon E5-2680 v3 (more like due to price/performance) or Xeon E5-2690 v3
Five builds will have i7-5760X CPUs
I never used Asrock WS boards earlier, but have many Asus WS boards (X79/Z97). So, what do you think of Asrock WS over Asus X99-E WS in the given configuration above?
Yeah, all Xeon workstations will have Intel P3700 NVMe storage solution. Also, I'm pondering on Synology DiskStation DS2413+ for 48TB NAS solution using WD Red Pro HDDs for those planned ten X99 builds.
Hence, what do you think about those two boards?
3) Did you observe any PCI-e 3.0 limitations/bottleneck on those two boards? Asus X99-E board has 16-four lanes solution? Please clarify on this count.
Thank you
eng.michael - Friday, January 23, 2015 - link
HELLOPLEASE HELP ME
I have one , and i install O.S windows server 2012R2 ,and install all drivers correctly EXCEPT LAN driver , any one can help me in this BIG Problem.
THANKS