The ASUS ROG Strix X299-XE Gaming Motherboard Review: Strix Refined
by Joe Shields on December 11, 2017 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- 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:
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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MrPoletski - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
I can totally see ten of thousands of dollars being spent on this board and a corresponding PC of worthwhile power so the owner can play master of orion 2, nes emulators and minecraft. I know, I'm one of those nobs.peevee - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
Somebody has to seriously grow up instead of wasting $400 for a gaming MB (or a few thou for a gaming computer).ddrіver - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
"ten of thousands of dollars"? Sounds a bit excessive given that 1 (or 2, where possible) of the most expensive components available still doesn't really get you to $10K. Unless you're buying by sorting for the most expensive anything and taking as many as you can fit in a case.Next thing you're going to brag you pay a guy to comment for you.
DanNeely - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
" The smaller slots are an x1 and two x4 slots (the first runs at 1x) powered by the chipset for add-in cards. "This seems backwards since the first x4 is always free to put a card in while the second is blocked by the 2nd GPU.
Joe Shields - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
Hey Dan, I don't blame you for thinking this way. However, from the specifications it says this...:1. PCIEX4_1 max. at x1 mode
Which is the same for all 44/28/16 lane CPUs.
DanNeely - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
ok. Just wanted to confirm it was a screwy design on Asus's part, not a transcription error.SanX - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
Where the hell are dual CPU mobos? Intel and AMD don't like to sell more chips?Dr. Swag - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
Intel has never sold non Xeon products that can be put in dual CPU mobos.PeachNCream - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
Google says there were dual Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and so forth motherboards around so Intel has sold non-Xeon products for dual socket/slot motherboards.DanNeely - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
With the exception of the P3 all of those predated the Xeon branding. Dual socket P3 was presumably transitional in their rebranding.For modern chips, on the Intel side mainstream parts have neither the on die hardware, nor chip socket support for multi-socket setups because doing so would inflate the costs of the 99.9% of systems that are single socket.
I'm less sure of the situation with AMD. I suspect that due to the level of die sharing they're doing between TR and Epyc that TR cpu dies themselves have the hardware needed to talk to a second CPU socket. However I'm skeptical that they've also paid extra for a larger/more complex socket on mainstream TR parts. It'd raise costs for the 99.9% of uni-socket systems and cut into sales of their more profitable Epyc line.
More generally multi-core CPUs have been heavily eroding the market for multi-socket chips over the last 15 years. They require more complex boards, more complex CPUs, in many cases (ie any that need threads on different sockets to talk to each other) they also require additional programming work to perform at their maximum capacity (AMD has a NUMA hit for new multi die but single socket chips, however its worse for their dual socket ones). All of that means that almost any time you can get a single socket system with a suitable performance level it will be more cost effective than a similar dual (never mind quad or 8way) socket system. With dozens of cores available on Intel and AMD's current high end platforms small core count dual socket systems rarely make sense outside of cases where you need huge amounts of ram and don't really care about CPU performance.