The MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium Motherboard Review: A Silver Flagship
by Gavin Bonshor on April 13, 2018 8:00 AM ESTTest Bed
As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |||
| Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 1700, 65W, $300, 8 Cores, 16 Threads, 3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo) |
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| Motherboard | MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium (BIOS v19) | ||
| Cooling | Thermaltake Floe Riing RGB 360 | ||
| Power Supply | Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W Gold PSU | ||
| Memory | 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 | ||
| Video Card | ASUS GTX 980 STRIX (1178/1279 Boost) | ||
| Hard Drive | Crucial MX300 1TB | ||
| Case | Open Test Bed | ||
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro | ||
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, overriding memory sub-timings 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.
Many thanks to...
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs. At the time of release, the STRIX brand from ASUS was aimed at silent running, or to use the marketing term: '0dB Silent Gaming'. This enables the card to disable the fans when the GPU is dealing with low loads well within temperature specifications. These cards equip the GTX 980 silicon with ASUS' Direct CU II cooler and 10-phase digital VRMs, aimed at high-efficiency conversion. Along with the card, ASUS bundles GPU Tweak software for overclocking and streaming assistance.
The GTX 980 uses NVIDIA's GM204 silicon die, built upon their Maxwell architecture. This die is 5.2 billion transistors for a die size of 298 mm2, built on TMSC's 28nm process. A GTX 980 uses the full GM204 core, with 2048 CUDA Cores and 64 ROPs with a 256-bit memory bus to GDDR5. The official power rating for the GTX 980 is 165W.
The ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB (or the full name of STRIX-GTX980-DC2OC-4GD5) runs a reasonable overclock over a reference GTX 980 card, with frequencies in the range of 1178-1279 MHz. The memory runs at stock, in this case 7010 MHz. Video outputs include three DisplayPort connectors, one HDMI 2.0 connector and a DVI-I.
Further Reading: AnandTech's NVIDIA GTX 980 Review
Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200/MX300 SSDs. Crucial stepped up to the plate as our benchmark list grows larger with newer benchmarks and titles, and the 1TB units are strong performers. The MX200s are based on Marvell's 88SS9189 controller and using Micron's 16nm 128Gbit MLC flash, these are 7mm high, 2.5-inch drives rated for 100K random read IOPs and 555/500 MB/s sequential read and write speeds. The 1TB models we are using here support TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (eDrive) encryption and have a 320TB rated endurance with a three-year warranty.
Further Reading: AnandTech's Crucial MX200 (250 GB, 500 GB & 1TB) Review
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with Vengeance LPX DDR4 Memory
Corsair kindly sent a set of their Vengeance LPX low profile, high-performance memory. The heatsink is made of pure aluminum to help remove heat from the sticks and has an eight-layer PCB. The heatsink is a low profile design to help fit in spaces where there may not be room for a tall heat spreader; think a SFF case or using a large heatsink.
Benchmark Overview
For our testing, depending on the product, we attempt to tailor the presentation of our global benchmark suite down into what users who would buy this hardware might actually want to run. For CPUs, our full test suite is typically used to gather data and all the results are placed into Bench, our benchmark database for users that want to look at non-typical benchmarks or legacy data. For motherboards, we run our short form CPU tests and our system benchmark tests which focus on non-typical and non-obvious performance metrics that are the focal point for specific groups of users.
The benchmarks fall into several areas:
Short Form CPU
Our short form testing script uses a straight run through of a mixture of known apps or workloads, and requires about four hours. These are typically the CPU tests we run in our motherboard suite, to identify any performance anomalies.
| CPU Short Form Benchmarks | |
| Three Dimensional Particle Movement v2.1 (3DPM) | 3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, derived from my academic research years looking at particle movement parallelism. The coding for this tool was rough, but emulates the real world in being non-CompSci trained code for a scientific endeavor. The code is unoptimized, but the test uses OpenMP to move particles around a field using one of six 3D movement algorithms in turn, each of which is found in the academic literature. |
| The second version of this benchmark is similar to the first, however it has been re-written in VS2012 with one major difference: the code has been written to address the issue of false sharing. If data required by multiple threads, say four, is in the same cache line, the software cannot read the cache line once and split the data to each thread - instead it will read four times in a serial fashion. The new software splits the data to new cache lines so reads can be parallelized and stalls minimized. | |
| WinRAR 5.4 | WinRAR is a compression based software to reduce file size at the expense of CPU cycles. We use the version that has been a stable part of our benchmark database through 2015, and run the default settings on a 1.52GB directory containing over 2800 files representing a small website with around thirty half-minute videos. We take the average of several runs in this instance. |
| POV-Ray 3.7.1 b4 | POV-Ray is a common ray-tracing tool used to generate realistic looking scenes. We've used POV-Ray in its various guises over the years as a good benchmark for performance, as well as a tool on the march to ray-tracing limited immersive environments. We use the built-in multithreaded benchmark. |
| HandBrake v1.0.2 | HandBrake is a freeware video conversion tool. We use the tool in to process two different videos into x264 in an MP4 container - first a 'low quality' two-hour video at 640x388 resolution to x264, then a 'high quality' ten-minute video at 4320x3840, and finally the second video again but into HEVC. The low-quality video scales at lower performance hardware, whereas the buffers required for high-quality tests can stretch even the biggest processors. At current, this is a CPU only test. |
| 7-Zip 9.2 | 7-Zip is a freeware compression/decompression tool that is widely deployed across the world. We run the included benchmark tool using a 50MB library and take the average of a set of fixed-time results. |
| DigiCortex v1.20 | The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates the activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. |
System Benchmarks
Our system benchmarks are designed to probe motherboard controller performance, particularly any additional USB controllers or the audio controller. As general platform tests we have DPC Latency measurements and system boot time, which can be difficult to optimize for on the board design and manufacturing level.
| System Benchmarks | |
| Power Consumption | One of the primary differences between different motherboards is power consumption. Aside from the base defaults that every motherboard needs, things like power delivery, controller choice, routing, and firmware can all contribute to how much power a system can draw. This increases for features such as PLX chips and multi-gigabit ethernet. |
| Non-UEFI POST Time | The POST sequence of the motherboard becomes before loading the OS, and involves pre-testing of onboard controllers, the CPU, the DRAM and everything else to ensure base stability. The number of controllers, as well as firmware optimizations, affect the POST time a lot. We test the BIOS defaults as well as attempt a stripped POST. |
| Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5 | Testing onboard audio is difficult, especially with the numerous amount of post-processing packages now being bundled with hardware. Nonetheless, manufacturers put time and effort into offering a 'cleaner' sound that is loud and of a high quality. RMAA, with version 6.2.5 (newer versions have issues), under the right settings can be used to test the signal-to-noise ratio, signal crossover, and harmonic distortion with noise. |
| USB Backup | USB ports can come from a variety of sources: chipsets, controllers or hubs. More often than not, the design of the traces can lead to direct impacts on USB performance as well as firmware level choices relating to signal integrity on the motherboard. |
| DPC Latency | Another element is deferred procedure call latency, or the ability to handle interrupt servicing. Depending on the motherboard firmware and controller selection, some motherboards handle these interrupts quicker than others. A poor result could lead to delays in performance, or for example with audio, a delayed request can manifest in distinctly audible pauses, pops or clicks. |
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T1beriu - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
BIOS Build Date: 09/19/2017.WOW.
T1beriu - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
I see that MSI released 2 BIOS versions since then.Ian Cutress - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
That's partly my fault. Gavin tested this board back in late January, wrote it up over Feb, and it's been in my to-edit list for a few weeks. The two BIOS revisions were 1/29 and 3/19, mostly relating to new processor support and some more memory tweaks, as well as Win7 support.ManuelDiego - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
Plus we are like 1 week away of X470, right? Not sure i see the point of releasing this board now, TBH.Ian Cutress - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
Bottom of first page, questions answered.ManuelDiego - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
I see, thanks for the addendum, Dr. Cutress.Topweasel - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
Those are kind of BS answers for a lack of effort to review the products when they launched over a year ago. This was MSI's Launch flagship motherboard, they only now (ish) gave you a board to review? I doubt that, considering it's price, and all of the review samples that AMD gave out were with the Crosshair, MSI would have been handing these out like candy hoping reviews would get people to get this over the RoG.Above you noted that the review was basically finished 4 months ago. Back when people would have actively purchasing X370 boards. While I am sure that the mobo companies will sell this next to the new boards, without steep discounts (ones that a Premium board like this are unlikely to get to make them less interesting than a mid level X470 board) the default purchasing habits will be the new series. Topping it off people buying this late into the cycle want to know more about quirks, long term issues, Bios update history, support level type stuff to make sure they are getting the most stable platform on which to build their computer around. Stuff that is missing because this isn't a long term review, it's a normal review near the end of its natural cycle.
I know the real answer and while disappointing you shouldn't be ashamed of. We want the best technical information and the best approach. You give us that, and the real answer being you were backed up with all of the hardware launches last year that you prioritized products that mattered to the larger portion of your readership I think most of us understand. Otherwise considering it was pretty much a year on the dot that you started reviewing products ancillary to the Ryzen release. That the secrecy behind reviewing products this late into the cycle has more to do with Purch's relationship with Intel and not down to workload.
Ryan Smith - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
"That the secrecy behind reviewing products this late into the cycle has more to do with Purch's relationship with Intel and not down to workload. "Let me be 100% crystal clear here: AnandTech's editorial calendar is set by me. Purch has taken an extremely light hand to AnandTech overall, and has never dictated what content we should run.
It does a massive disservice to Ian, Gavin, and my other editors when anyone accuses, insinuates, or otherwise implies that they are acting with ulterior, unethical motives. These are some of the hardest working people I know - Ian in particular - and it was my choice alone in determining our editorial priorities. Which yes, meant having Ian work on some other things (like digging into the CTS story) ahead of editing motherboard reviews.
Topweasel - Friday, April 13, 2018 - link
I want to point out I wasn't actually suggesting that was the case. I am sure it's all about hands available and deciding what products will get the most re-viewership (for example more I7's than Ryzen 7's sold means more people would be interested in Z270/370 reviews than X370). But it's better to actually say that than try to play it off like all of a sudden you got 10 AM4 300 series boards in a couple months before the refresh and that there is this demand for reviews of the product. This isn't the usually week or two later with more in depth information, this is nearing the end of a products viable marketable sales (but as noted not the end of sales).But dancing around the actual reason for the delay and considering the poorness of the timing (almost exactly a year after launch). It causes people to generate conspiracy theories. Without knowing better that would be the one that would come to my head. Why almost exactly a year, what is the significance of the year? It almost seems like a time limited exclusivity deal like games some times have. It would then spiral from there, why? Well Purch and Intel have a relationship about very high level advertising through regular media deal going on.
Sure some fans aren't going to like being told their product doesn't generate enough views. But obviously a choice was already made that was going that their readership wasn't worth the ROI in man hours. So it's not like that guy not wanting to read a review after being told that is going impact you that much since again his market was to small for the effort anyways. But in the end most reasonable people are going to welcome more transparency there rather than looking for another reason to call Anandtech a schill site. I don't think it is. Never have.
Just think about that in the future. It's one of the things that was great about Anandtech back in the day and will keep the site a worthy one coming back. Don't pull the punches on reviews, don't dance around choices made. Just be as straightforward and technical as possible. Doing otherwise invites critism and over scrutinization.
Qasar - Saturday, April 14, 2018 - link
Topweasel here is a better idea....if you think you can do better then anandtech does now.. then how about you start your own review site, and do them yourself based on what you feel your readers will want at any given time.
the staff here have stated over and over again, they decide what gets reviewed, when and when it is posted on here, should x370 and AM4 related stuff have been reviewed months ago.. yes.. but we dont know their schedule, work load, or whats in the queue to be reviewed or posted. i remember a post a while back that said they have a new reviewer for amd related product and are getting him up to speed, that could of been part of the delay... either way. i keep coming back here cause of the quality of these reviews and write ups, and how deep the guys and anandtech have always gone into something on the tech side.. and i will keep coming back for that.. even if a lot of it.. i dont understand cause its above my pay grade :-) this is one of the best places to go for reviews and the tech inside a lot of the products on here