The ASRock X299 Extreme4 Motherboard Review: $200 Entry To HEDT
by Joe Shields on April 26, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- ASRock
- X299
- Basin Falls
- Skylake-X
- Extreme4
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:
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 multi threaded 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. |
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. |
Gaming
Our gaming benchmarks are designed to show any differences in performance when playing games.
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23 Comments
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eas1974 - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
My current rig is sporting the X99 extreme 4 from Asrock. It's been a overall awesome board. The only problem was i broke off one of the usb 3 headers on the board but it was my fault. Overclocked my 5820k to 4.2G. Dual GTX970's. It still chews up anything I through at it. I would defninlty buy another Asrock board.LaraDuncan - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
I resigned my office-job and now I am getting paid 85 D0llar hourly. How? I work over internet! My old work was making me miserable, so I was forced to try something different, two years after...I can say my life is changed-completely for the better!Check it out what i do....
Total Meltdowner - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
Whoa 85?! Show me how!!!milkod2001 - Friday, April 27, 2018 - link
Yeah, i guess playing with your funny in front on web camera does pay something. Good for you.MDD1963 - Friday, April 27, 2018 - link
Instead, I too became a piece of shit scamming adds about 'Earn $85/hr from home' on tech forums...! :)allenb - Friday, April 27, 2018 - link
I've got the 5820K in an X99 Extreme 4 as well. It's never been anything less than perfect. If they've kept it up for this version, it'll be a fine product and not just for "cheap" (is a $200 motherboard ever cheap?)duploxxx - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
15 motherboards reviewed of the same chipset, must be an INTEL part.....lots of **** that will buy this broken platform.
Looking at how ryzen2 performs this x299 platform and its cpu selection will even be a bigger joke.
Ket_MANIAC - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
Just compare those numbers to the no of Ryzen motherboard reviews they have done over the year, and you will be surprised. It seems people are more interested in buying 200 dollars and above motherboards for a stupid product line up than 100 for a fantastic price to performance king lineup. People expect good motherboard reviews and few websites out there are qualified to do so. Considering how much AnandTech's motherboard review numbers are highly regarded in the industry, I am sure hundreds of thousands of people were disappointed when they found out that there are no X370 or B350 reviews from Anand. I was.Galcobar - Monday, April 30, 2018 - link
There have been four X370 boards reviewed, and two B350. Borrowed this list from the ASROCK ITX X370 review on the front page.$255 - MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium [review]
$175 - GIGABYTE AX370-Gaming 5 [review]
$160 - ASRock X370 Gaming-ITX/ac [this review]
$110 - Biostar X370GTN [review]
$98 - MSI B350 Tomahawk [review]
$90 - ASRock B350 Gaming K4 [review]
Ket_MANIAC - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
Really makes us feel proud, eh? 6 reviews of a platform which everyone is buying while 15 of a platform the whole industry chastised and only testosterone fueled enthusiasts are buying to satisfy their ego. Really makes me proud of AnandTech. No review of the flagship Crosshair Hero, no review of the phenomenally successful Taichi, not a mention of the extremely popular Prime X370 and Asrock B350 Gaming Pro. Really, this website is outdoing itself. Nevermind, 2nd gen is here and I hope things improve.