GIGABYTE Z590 Aorus Master Review: Soaring High With Rocket Lake
by Gavin Bonshor on April 28, 2021 1:00 PM ESTGaming Performance
For Z590 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 20H2 update.
Civilization 6
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civilization series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer underflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but I have played every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, and it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
The latest installment of the Tomb Raider franchise does less rising and lurks more in the shadows with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As expected this action-adventure follows Lara Croft which is the main protagonist of the franchise as she muscles through the Mesoamerican and South American regions looking to stop a Mayan apocalyptic she herself unleashed. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the direct sequel to the previous Rise of the Tomb Raider and was developed by Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics and was published by Square Enix which hit shelves across multiple platforms in September 2018. This title effectively closes the Lara Croft Origins story and has received critical acclaims upon its release.
The integrated Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark is similar to that of the previous game Rise of the Tomb Raider, which we have used in our previous benchmarking suite. The newer Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses DirectX 11 and 12, with this particular title being touted as having one of the best implementations of DirectX 12 of any game released so far.
Strange Brigade (DX12)
Strange Brigade is based in 1903’s Egypt and follows a story which is very similar to that of the Mummy film franchise. This particular third-person shooter is developed by Rebellion Developments which is more widely known for games such as the Sniper Elite and Alien vs Predator series. The game follows the hunt for Seteki the Witch Queen who has arisen once again and the only ‘troop’ who can ultimately stop her. Gameplay is cooperative-centric with a wide variety of different levels and many puzzles which need solving by the British colonial Secret Service agents sent to put an end to her reign of barbaric and brutality.
The game supports both the DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs and houses its own built-in benchmark which offers various options up for customization including textures, anti-aliasing, reflections, draw distance and even allows users to enable or disable motion blur, ambient occlusion and tessellation among others. AMD has boasted previously that Strange Brigade is part of its Vulkan API implementation offering scalability for AMD multi-graphics card configurations. For our testing, we use the DirectX 12 benchmark.
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Oxford Guy - Thursday, May 6, 2021 - link
'well just because they eliminated a warranty option may just mean no one was buying it'I'll buy that for a dollar.
JVC8bal - Wednesday, April 28, 2021 - link
Overall, I am happy with this product. DDR-4400, overclocked 11900k at 5.1ghz all cores, gen4 NVMe SSD, 3080 running 16x gen4.However, there was an issue that x570 PCIE gen4 users encountered, that they seem to be correcting. If you had a gen4 NVMe + gen4 graphics card, every 300ms you would get a WHEA-LOGGER event and the computer would BSOD every 1-2 hours. After many responsive emails from their customer support, BIOS version f5d now allows a NVMe gen4 + graphics gen4 without crashing. There is still a WHEA-LOGGER message every 300ms which is noise, but that should be fixed with a future Intel Chipset update.
skaurus - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
You talking about AMD chipset issue, but this motherboard is based on Intel chipset. Completely another story.JVC8bal - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Yet the issue was the same: an implementation problem of the PCIE 4.0 specs for first-generation platforms. But thank you for feeling it necessary to respond with the simplistic obviology.Spunjji - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Given how none of that second paragraph was relevant to this article, you look suspiciously like you're repeating keywords to maintain the prevalence of specific, already-resolved issues pertaining to Intel's competitors in search-engine rankings. What a mess.JVC8bal - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Actually, after doing a RMA on 3 of these boards to find the problem, I felt inclined to respond to the review. Others might be having this same issue. They will just need to update to the latest BIOS to avoid crashes with that combination of hardware. I don't why people like you feel the need to respond with conspiracy theories.WaltC - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Sorry, man--but I installed a PCIe4 5700XT into my x570 Aorus Master back in July 2019--about 21 months or so. And I've never--not even once--had any of the problems you allude to...;) It's been solid as a rock. Someone has badly misled you--it's just common old anti-AMD FUD. Very immature hogwash.JVC8bal - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Google "whea-logger and pcie 4". x570 was the first platform to experience this manifestation of the problems This was helpful in identifying the problem of specific gen4 NVMe drives conflicting with gen4 graphics cards. Speaking of immature, what a response... not just words, but the logic: somehow your 1-off, personal experience is indicative over broader reality? It's anti-AMD propaganda?TheinsanegamerN - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
"I dont have a problem therefore the problem does not exist and anyone who says otherwise is immature, look how mature and sohpisticated i am! My farts smell like cinnamon!"silverblue - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Is that with all the necessary security patches applied? AMD processors are more secure than their Intel competitors right now. AMD also offered PCIe 4.0 for nearly two years before Intel got in on the act. Finally, AMD CPUs are simply more efficient.Three for the search engines to chew on.