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 ASUS X99 Rampage V Extreme does implement MultiCore Turbo.

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

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

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 2014
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  • dark4181 - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    No mention of NVMe support? EATX? Dealbreakers for me. I need ATX formfactor and NVMe support. Looks like I'm getting the X99-Pro/3.1
  • freeskier93 - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    Asus has already said all Z97 and X99 will have NVMe support, not sure why this would be an exception.
  • SirGCal - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    Surprised they don't have USB C in there also. Everything else but missing out on the super fast and flexible new USB support. I'll wait some more. And ya, no EATX For me either anymore...
  • BPB - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    The article states there is a version with USB 3.1
  • DanNeely - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    It's USB3.1 but still A style connectors, not the new C one. The addin board providing it is PCIe x4; so you're giving up a 4way GPU setup to use it. A minor concern for most people, but it goes toward the existing you can have it all but not all at once problem the board has.
  • BPB - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    Good points. I don't see a need for the new connector for a while, but I think Asus should have included it.
  • Breit - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link

    You know this board was released back in august 2014, right?
  • movieman03 - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    I think they had to go EATX to fit all the PCI-e slots and a full size M.2. There is just a lot going on. I have the Z97 Maximus VII forumula and ASUS gave us a little riser card that limits the physical size of the M.2, so it is nice to see them able to use the full size with this one
  • DanNeely - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    "As with any purchase of a high end motherboard for gaming, taking it out of the box is an experience. Only a system builder that has to put together 50 systems a week would get bored of it."

    Seriously. I think the only time I was even vaguely excited about all the stuff bundled in with a board was 14 years ago when I built my first box. The last time I cared about a major chunk of the bundled stuff was 8 or 9 years ago when I build my first sata box and needed new cables. Now...

    Looking at the bundle on Newegg my reactions are: Are those cables with LEDs on the end?!?! Even if I had a case with a Window and wanted to bling my system out in the tackiest gamer style *gag*, those probably wouldn't be the right colors for what I wanted. I've got probably 10 sata cables for every sata drive I own at this point; that's the last thing I need now. Ditto for the collection of SLI bridges. I'll be OCing this box once when I first build it, after that point that OC handset thingy will be totally worthless; and even then sitting on the table is fine I don't need a stand for it. On the plus side, no USB/firewire bracket. On the minus side, it looks like they're missing the one useful bit of the bundle: the little header blocks that let you bundle all the front panel connectors into a single block where you can see what you're doing before plugging them in. (The fact that virtually everyone is using a decade+ old standard for how the headers are laid out; but no case vendor is willing to put them into a unified block continues to enrage me every time I build a new system.)
  • Schickenipple - Monday, June 22, 2015 - link

    I'll second that comment about the switch/LED header blocks. I can't believe it's not a standard by now!

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