The GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Master Motherboard Review: Solid, But Not Special
by Gavin Bonshor on March 21, 2019 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Gigabyte
- ATX
- LGA1151
- i7-8700K
- Z390
- Aorus Master
Gaming Performance
AoTS Escalation
Ashes of the Singularity is a Real-Time Strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The original AoTS was released back in March of 2016 while the standalone expansion pack, Escalation, was released in November of 2016 adding more structures, maps, and units. We use this specific benchmark as it relies on both a good GPU as well as on the CPU in order to get the most frames per second. This balance is able to better display any systematic differences in gaming as opposed to a more GPU heavy title where the CPU and system don't matter quite as much. We use the default "Crazy" in-game settings using the DX11 rendering path in both 1080p and 4K UHD resolutions. The benchmark is run four times and the results averaged then plugged into the graph.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.
One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
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El Sama - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
Comes with a solid VRM, unlike Asus fake Phases VRM.TelstarTOS - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
This.gavbon - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
It's a solid power delivery; nothing wrong with using doublers and GIGABYTE are very clear in their marketing too. I wish all the vendors followed this practice!sonny73n - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
I went to Gigabyte website for this board and saw that they claim it’s a true 12 phase VRM.But Anandtech says “the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Master is highly competitive with its power delivery design (doubled six-phase)”.
So Gigabyte bullshit AGAIN. I hope your wish won’t come true.
iohlighi - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link
There's a difference between using doublers, which are additional components to split a phase into two phases, and just adding two of each component to a single phase which is what people are referring to with asus here. With doublers, they are indeed out of phase with each other as needed to be considered a phase. The downside of doublers vs dedicated phases without doublers is there is no load/temp balancing between the two doubled phases because the controller sees it as just one.JlHADJOE - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link
A properly doubled 6-phase *is* a true 12-phase.If the output of the PWM is A B C D E F, then a Gigabyte puts a doubler on each PWM output, and an output stages on each of the doubler's outputs, so the final result becomes something like A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2 D1 D2 E1 E2 F1 F2. Each sub-phase is a proper time slice.
ASUS on the other hand is sneaky and simply wired two output stages to each of the PWM's four output channels on their boards, so A B C D from the PWM simply becomes AA BB CC DD.
sonny73n - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
I’ve seen more fake phases VRM from Gigabyte than any others. Even tho Gigabyte claims this board has 12 true phases, I wouldn’t believe them. And sure Gigabyte boards can OC to 5Ghz but core voltage would be 1.5v, temp will be more than 100C and crash as soon as your game loads.Go to Newegg for buyers’ reviews. Gigabyte customer service as well as OCing ability are horrible.
sonny73n - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
Sorry not all Gigabyte boards are as bad as I said. It’s only about 90% of them and this is not silicone lottery.JlHADJOE - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link
Gigabyte's Z390 Aorus line is legit (unlike their previous Z370 series). Buildzoid took a very in-depth look at this board and the VRMs get his seal of approval.https://youtu.be/6J7qnr0YNH8?t=571
Linked timestamp is at start of VRM analysis
shaolin95 - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
nonsense...talking BS without actually researching. Go cry home Asus fanboy