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
Gaming Performance 2017: 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 system differences in gaming as opposed to a more GPU heavy title where the CPU and system doesn't matter quite as much. We use the default "Crazy" in-game settings using the DX12 rendering path in both 1080p and 4K UHD resolutions. The benchmark is run four times and the results averaged then plugged into the graph.
The results here do not show any tangible differences between the two motherboards tested thus far.
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ddriver - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
Does it support intel's latest and greatest dual core i3 HEDT cpu? If not - no buy.duploxxx - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
why test on a stupid 7900X cpu?duploxxx - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
bring the 16-18 core and show how the dual memory controller is handling the games, after all this is a gaming board ....ddriver - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
Yeah, and don't forget the games that scale up to 16-18 cores.JeffFlanagan - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
For some reason, people feel the need to stream their games on the Internet, so that only leaves 15-17 cores for the game to use.It seems like an i5 is still a much better value for a gaming machine since most games use very few cores.
duploxxx - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
the reason i ask is because threadripper reviews all over the net were hammered with the poor gaming benchies en the reason for specifc settings. guess what, no gaming benchies on the HCC designs from Intel that have the same memory disadvantage.OhWhateverOnceMore - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
"i9" ...ok..."Professional" ... uh uh...
"Gaming" ... /r/hmmm
TEAMSWITCHER - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
Is there an Intel co-marketing kick-back for having a "Gaming" branding? You see it everywhere...oRAirwolf - 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. Network traffic shaping is still possible through software, although Rivet Networks would likely claim they offer an optimized solution if their chip had been used. Perhaps a combination of an Intel GbE, Rivet Networks Killer E2500 GbE, and an Aquantia 10GbE which would have encompassed more of its tarket market."Wutness? Why on Earth would you want to see Killer on a gaming board? ASUS has shown through their own testing that Killer NIC's are trash:
https://rog.asus.com/articles/product-news/tried-a...
That aforementioned paragraph seriously makes me question the legitimacy of reviews on this site now. It is common knowledge that Killer is absolute and utter trash.
BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
Oh you beat me to the point here. This is one of very rare times when I'd agree that there appears to be a certain amount of institutional bias at Anandtech in favor of Killer NICs. If you do a search for the string "Rivet Networks" in AT's search box you can find this article from September 2016:https://www.anandtech.com/show/10679/rivet-network...
It looks like that was sort of ground zero for that opinion and it's stuck since. In the comments of that article (disclosure - I was a participant with cynical views of Killer NICs even back then for reasons I make clear in those comments) there was discussion about reviewing and analyzing the E2500. Anandtech has never presented such a review or supplied readers with any data supporting the idea that Killer NICs are somehow superior or worthy of being sought out by consumers. Despite lacking reliable test data, there's still unexplained support in the form of hint-dropped lines like the one you've quoted that imply a certain subset of readers should be seeking out Killer NIC-equipped products or that its somehow unusual that a premium motherboard omits them.
I find the whole thing does hurt Anandtech's credibility. If there's data that supports a Killer NIC being a better option, gather it and publish it. Don't assert and insinuate without any substantially supportive information to a group of people (gamers in this case) without being able to back up those claims. Killer NICs can be acquired for testing. Maybe Rivet's people would supply a product for testing. If Rivet doesn't or does and Anandtech doesn't test it, then what else do we have to go on? Consumers in the target audience are already broadly suspicious of the benefits Rivet claims Killer NICs offer to the point where it seems almost delusional to boost them in a motherboard review.