The ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Professional Gaming i9 Motherboard Review
by Joe Shields on September 26, 2017 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gaming
- Intel
- ASRock
- SLI
- Fatal1ty
- CrossFire
- X299
- Skylake-X
- Kaby Lake-X
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, the gaming tests with half the GPUs of our processor suite, 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:
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 motherboads 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 distinct audible pauses, pops or clicks. |
Short Form CPU and GPU Testing
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 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. |
| Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation | As with most of our non-platform tests, they are mainly in place to spot differences. For our gaming on X299, we use Ashes of the Singularity as a modern game with up-to-date features to confirm GPU benchmark consistency. |
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jardows2 - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
I took the comment differently than you. I took it as being surprised that they didn't include a Killer NIC, not that the reviewer was disappointed in any way. It seems to be the standard practice of MB makers to give their "gaming" boards a more "awesomeness" by including the "much superior because of such a cool name" Killer NIC. Just a little bit surprised that AsRock didn't do it on this one.notR1CH - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Killer NICs are all software based too (except the very first proof of concept one with the ridiculous heatsink). Their software and drivers are trash compared to well established vendors like Intel. I actively avoid any motherboards integrating their hardware and I'm very surprised to see Anandtech in favor of them.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
"Curiously, for a motherboard which has "gaming" in the title and having three network ports, we were surprised not to see a Killer Network based NIC which finds its way on to several other gaming motherboards."I don't think that Killer NICs are a selling point these days. Rivet has a well-deserved, awful reputation for hocking what amounts to ethernet snake oil. Numerous times, I've seen people state that they will not purchase a particular product because a Killer NIC is present. ASRock probably made a good decision by omitting rather than including one.
Flunk - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
You hit the rivet on the head there, most gamers don't want Killer Nics because of the poor software support and total lack of any advantage in performance. They'd rather have an Intel NIC that is rock solid.apoctwist - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Yeah. I have an ASRock X99X mobo and when I tried to use the Killer NIC my cpu usage was sitting at close to 60% on idle because the stupid software kept doing something. Luckily ASRock included a Intel NIC, moved to that and never looked back. I will never buy a mobo that has Killer NICs, period. So I'm glad ASRock is getting rid of that junk. Even more interesting is ASRock including Intel NICs on AMD's platform.samer1970 - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
X299 +i9 is as stupid choice . people who choose 10+ cores want ECC support. and the new Turbo is more than enough for speed.people who want to overclock those cpu will go for the cheapest coming 6 cores i7 8700K ..
I dont know why intel is shooting itself in the foot .. intel enable ECC for i9 .. this needs no brain at all to figure out. unless your iq is zero
ddriver - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
Intel was thinking about milking idiots.According to intel shills ECC is so unimportant, that intel feels the need to charge a 50% premium for an identical product that doesn't have ECC disabled.
But let's be honest, games need 10+ core products as much as they need ECC - not at all.
HEDT for gaming is simply idiocy. It is a waste. Intel's HEDT lineup however seems to be designed with one purpose in mind - milking idiots out of their money. So it all makes sense in a sad, sad way.
Do not be fooled by the high price, this is not a product for professionals, this is an expensive toy for losers with poor self esteem who need it to cultivate an illusion that it somehow makes up for their lack of redeeming qualities, even if all it does in reality is further prove their idiocy. Product value is not all that bad around 6-8 cores, albeit IO is abysmal, and of course, the lack of ECC support. But everything on top of that outta come with a certificate for idiocy, and for the 16 and 18 core versions, it should come in a massive, big frame too.
apoctwist - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
No need for a certificate or frame. You can spot one of these idiots a mile away. They'll be covered in LEDs.samer1970 - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
LOL ...True , Sadly all case manufacturers are going RGB led design to the point that I must get an older case each time I make a PC.
Tempered Glass and LED ... people forgot how important it is to shield their PC and the RGB is just for kids.
I miss already good designed PC cases ...
peevee - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
"Professional Gaming"Up next: your mom's basement becomes "Professional Office".