ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate: Just Add 10GbE?

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How We Test

We started today’s comparison by retesting the Gigabyte’s X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi, using the new hardware available at a different lab. Unfortunately, we found that the board defaulted our high-flying G.Skill DDR4-3866 to a mere DDR4-1866, crippling our performance metrics. Kingston’s DDR4-2933 now fills that role with an XMP setting that’s optimized for AMD processors and equally impressive overclocking capacity. Unfortunately, its DDR4-2400 defaults boosted performance to the point that none of our prior findings could be properly compared. We’re restarting from a zero baseline.

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SoundIntegrated HD audio
NetworkIntegrated gigabit networking
Graphics DriverGeForce 382.53

The same platform that cooled the intense heat of our X299 motherboards works equally well with AMD’s AM4 processors, as proven in the overclocking evaluation of our next page.

Comparison

With only one X470 board to compare, we filled out the bottom of our charts with an average of all previous Z370 data. You’ll want to see just how well the AM4 boards perform before crying Intel bias on this occasion.

Benchmark Settings

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Synthetic Benchmarks & Settings
PCMark 8Version 2.7.613 Home, Creative, Work, Storage, Applications (Adobe & Microsoft)
3DMark 13Version 4.47.597.0 Skydiver, Firestrike, Firestrike Extreme Default Presets
SiSoftware SandraVersion 2016.03.22.21 CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth
DiskSPD4K Random Read, 4K Random Write 128K Sequential Read, 128K Sequential Write
Cinebench R15Build RC83328DEMO OpenGL Benchmark
CompuBenchVersion 1.5.8 Face Detection, Optical Flow, Ocean Surface, Ray Tracing
Application Tests & Settings
LAME MP3Version 3.98.3 Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 0.9.9 Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x265 mp4
BlenderVersion 2.68a BMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark, BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark
7-ZipVersion 16.02 THG-Workload (7.6GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9"
Adobe After Effects CCRelease 2015.3.0, Version 13.8.0.144 PCMark-driven routine
Adobe Photoshop CCRelease 2015.5.0, 20160603.r.88 x64 PCMark-driven routine (light and heavy)
Adobe InDesign CCRelease 2015.4, Build 11.4.0.90 x64 PCMark-driven routine
Adobe IllustratorRelease 2015.3.0, Version 20.0.0 (64-bit) PCMark-driven routine
Game Tests & Settings
Ashes of the SingularityVersion 1.31.21360 High Preset - 1920 x 1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAA Crazy Preset - 1920 x 1080, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA
F1 20152015 Season, Abu Dhabi track, Rain Medium Preset, no AF Ultra High Preset, 16x AF
Metro: Last Light ReduxVersion 3.00 x64 High Quality, 1920 x 1080, High Tesselation, 16x AF Very High Quality, 1920 x 1080, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF
The Talos PrincipleVersion 267252 Medium Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AF Ultra Preset, Very High Quality, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF

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Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
  • Rookie_MIB
    Just wondering why you would include the 'average 8700k configuration' in the overclocking results for an article about an AM4 platform? Why not include a result on a B350 AM4 board? That way you could compare the value of AMD budget systems vs stepping up to a more expensive board for a Ryzen build.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    21363173 said:
    Just wondering why you would include the 'average 8700k configuration' in the overclocking results for an article about an AM4 platform? Why not include a result on a B350 AM4 board? That way you could compare the value of AMD budget systems vs stepping up to a more expensive board for a Ryzen build.
    Simply including the X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi added nearly three days to the test, and adding another AM4 board would have delayed the review by that much again. We did test more AM4 boards for the second, third, and fourth review, but those reviews haven't been published yet.
    Reply
  • rantoc
    I really hope 10GbE takes off, 1GbE is starting to feel slow now that storage speeds have been increased significantly with SSD's
    Reply