CPU Performance

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 reference, the ASRock X99 OC Formula on BIOS 1.6 does not implement MultiCore Turbo by default.

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. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.

3D Particle Movement: Single Threaded

3D Particle Movement: MultiThreaded

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.

WinRAR 5.01, 2867 files, 1.52 GB

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.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.9

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.

HandBrake v0.9.9 LQ Film

HandBrake v0.9.9 2x4K

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.

POV-Ray 3.7 Beta RC4

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.

7-zip Benchmark

System Performance Gaming Performance
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  • ssamhouu - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    "When we compare the OC Formula to the other high end overclocking motherboards on the market such as the SOC Force, the Classified, the XPower and the Rampage V Extreme, it becomes clear that the OC Formula is the cheapest out of the set."...$300+ wow
  • Morawka - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    dude it's got tons of sata and m.2. wish it had dual intel nic tho. the other one is aethoros on this board.
  • sjprg2 - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    I have never understood why they put dual NICs and don't make them the same. I for one use the dual NICs for transfers to my NAS and the Intel's do it right.
  • leedreamer189 - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    And Conformal Coating is water resistant, how cool is that!
  • Fallen Kell - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    Completely agree. For almost any company that implements dual NICs which are not the same (aside from a Killer NIC+chipset NIC), it is simply a feature checkbox from the marketing department so they can say, "Yep, we have that too."
  • Flunk - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    I disagree with your assertition that "Killer NIC"s are the exception. Dual Intel or bust, Killer is just a way of branding cheap Qualcomm-Atheros parts as if they were quality.
  • Lukart - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    And It performs awesome as well! I made a build using this mobo for a friend, has lots of features, easy install, good software and lots of configuration options.
  • chrnochime - Friday, January 2, 2015 - link

    It pays to play at X99 level. If that's too expensive for you go play with Z97 instead.
  • imaheadcase - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    Is anyone else getting to wanting to use just mini-atx boards now-a-days? I just can't justify getting a atx or something like this for features that i would hardly use. The only reason i had a ATX board before is for SLI.

    But now you can get mini atx boards that do just as well as atx boards for less money. Used to be mini was only basic function, now they are full featured boards. My board for home server was Gigabyte WiFi, and i'm going to get another for this gaming system i use because i like it so much.
  • DavidBrees - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link

    Maximus VII Impact is a great board for compact builds. I'm planning on putting it in a NCASE M1. With an M.2 slot and Wifi included in the board it makes it an easy choice.

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