CPU Performance, Short Form

For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We put the memory settings at the CPU manufacturers suggested frequency, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.

For Z590 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 20H2 update.

Rendering - Blender 2.7b: 3D Creation Suite

A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.

Blender 2.79b bmw27_cpu Benchmark

Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing

The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, 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 1-2 minutes on high-end platforms.

POV-Ray 3.7.1 Benchmark

Rendering - Crysis CPU Render

One of the most oft used memes in computer gaming is ‘Can It Run Crysis?’. The original 2007 game, built in the Crytek engine by Crytek, was heralded as a computationally complex title for the hardware at the time and several years after, suggesting that a user needed graphics hardware from the future in order to run it. Fast forward over a decade, and the game runs fairly easily on modern GPUs, but we can also apply the same concept to pure CPU rendering – can the CPU render Crysis? Since 64 core processors entered the market, one can dream. We built a benchmark to see whether the hardware can.

For this test, we’re running Crysis’ own GPU benchmark, but in CPU render mode. This is a 2000 frame test, which we run over a series of resolutions from 800x600 up to 1920x1080. For simplicity, we provide the 1080p test here.​

Crysis CPU Render: 1920x1080

Rendering - Cinebench R23: link

Maxon's real-world and cross-platform Cinebench test suite has been a staple in benchmarking and rendering performance for many years. Its latest installment is the R23 version, which is based on its latest 23 code which uses updated compilers. It acts as a real-world system benchmark that incorporates common tasks and rendering workloads as opposed to less diverse benchmarks which only take measurements based on certain CPU functions. Cinebench R23 can also measure both single-threaded and multi-threaded performance.

Cinebench R23 CPU: Single ThreadCinebench R23 CPU: Multi Thread

Compression – WinRAR 5.60b3: 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.

WinRAR 5.60b3

3DPMv2.1 – 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 win in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.

3D Particle Movement v2.1

NAMD 2.13 (ApoA1): Molecular Dynamics

One frequent request over the years has been for some form of molecular dynamics simulation. Molecular dynamics forms the basis of a lot of computational biology and chemistry when modeling specific molecules, enabling researchers to find low energy configurations or potential active binding sites, especially when looking at larger proteins. We’re using the NAMD software here, or Nanoscale Molecular Dynamics, often cited for its parallel efficiency. Unfortunately the version we’re using is limited to 64 threads on Windows, but we can still use it to analyze our processors. We’re simulating the ApoA1 protein for 10 minutes, and reporting back the ‘nanoseconds per day’ that our processor can simulate. Molecular dynamics is so complex that yes, you can spend a day simply calculating a nanosecond of molecular movement.

NAMD 2.31 Molecular Dynamics (ApoA1)

System Performance Gaming Performance
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  • Cullinaire - Thursday, April 1, 2021 - link

    What a gimmick. Instead of a stepper motor why not have a steam engine powered by the CPU heat.
  • Molor1880 - Thursday, April 1, 2021 - link

    Should have gone with a tiny sterling engine. That would make this joke a bit better.
  • kachan64 - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link

    Agree. Should have gone with that!
  • YB1064 - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link

    No 10GbE on a FOUR HUNDRED dollar motherboard?? No thanks.
  • zanon - Saturday, April 3, 2021 - link

    This, the money they put into the gimmick useless juno should have gone to networking instead. Though I suppose in fairness unlike AMD they have to work with severe bandwidth limitations so they can't just do every single useful feature. But that one should have been a priority.
  • ZoZo - Saturday, April 3, 2021 - link

    There's the same bandwidth on the Z590 platform as the X570.
    20 PCI-E 4.0 lanes from the CPU, and ~4 GB/s between CPU and chipset (through 4 PCI-E 4.0 lanes on X570, and 8 DMI/PCI-E 3.0 lanes on Z590).
    And 10 Gb/s networking just needs 1.25 GB/s, so no severe bandwidth limitations from connecting it to a PCI-E 3.0 x1 link to the chipset.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, April 4, 2021 - link

    The raichu line had 10gb as a selling point with the z200 and x400 vhipsets. For some reason asrock abandoned this idea and raised the price.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, April 4, 2021 - link

    Agreed. The whole reason to get a taichi was the 10gb ethernet onboard.
  • Samus - Saturday, April 3, 2021 - link

    This is about the level of gimmick I expected from ASRock, after all the brand is a second-rate Asus so they need to do these cheesy things to get attention.
  • zotric - Sunday, October 10, 2021 - link

    I must say I have had excellent support for my older ASRock Taichi board so don't write it off!

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