ASRock X99M Extreme4 And Fatal1ty X99M Killer Review
ASRock is ready to take on EVGA in the battle for enthusiast-oriented microATX motherboards. Can the company best known for value conquer its gaming-centric competitor in overclocking and features, or will this be a pure pricing play?
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Benchmark Results
Last month, we compared EVGA’s X99 Micro to full-sized X99 boards, and found the small platform's performance to be average. That’s not a bad thing, since there’s little performance difference to be found on products that rely so heavily on component integration. This month, ASRock’s X99M Extreme4 and Fatal1ty X99M Killer take on their Micro ATX rival.
Futuremark 3DMark And PCMark
Similarities between different motherboard models mean that nothing’s broken and nobody is cheating, though Intel’s integration does leave a little wiggle room for one brand to beat the other based on memory timings. Sandra could sort that out.
SiSoftware Sandra
Indeed, both of ASRock’s X99M motherboards take a slight lead in Sandra Memory Bandwidth when using the DRAM’s default (SPD) values. We don’t expect to see much difference in most applications, though higher bandwidth occasionally helps in games.
3D Gaming
ASRock’s X99M series picks up about 1FPS in Battlefield 4 and 4FPS in Grid 2 at each game’s lower-detail test settings. While those presets might be adequate for most gamers, the high frame rates will have quality-craving enthusiasts using the higher, less-impacted visual settings.
Encoding, Creativity, Productivity And File Compression
We see a dead heat in most of our non-gaming applications, with ASRock’s X99M series claiming small victories in 3ds Max and 7-Zip. The 7-Zip result is particularly hard to track down since it’s repeatable and beyond the difference in memory bandwidth. I’m calling it a fluke.
Current page: Benchmark Results
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Crashman 14730663 said:Just a quick error,
Chipset for all X99 boards is listed as Z97
Fixed, thanks. In case you're wondering, that type of error occurs from continuously recycling tables. -
HideOut To bad the killer model seems to suffer a high markup at amazon according to the green link.Reply -
Lutfij Nice work Thomas! Guess you were sitting on this board in your lab for some time now huh ? :D :)Reply
Anyways, good writeup and keep em coming. Now to find someone crazy enough to shell out on a X99 platform inside an N200 ... hmmm. -
Crashman 14733470 said:Nice work Thomas! Guess you were sitting on this board in your lab for some time now huh ? :D :)
Anyways, good writeup and keep em coming. Now to find someone crazy enough to shell out on a X99 platform inside an N200 ... hmmm.
It takes a couple weeks to get stuff published, unless there's an NDA and everyone puts everything else to the side. These would be among the stuff put to the side though :(
At least you knew it was coming :) -
Mac266 14730952 said:
Fixed, thanks. In case you're wondering, that type of error occurs from continuously recycling tables.
Onya Crash. Nice review as well. -
m32 The ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer LGA 2011-v3 is selling for $250 ($230 AMIR) on Newegg. Amazon currently isn't selling it on Amazon, and 3rd parties are known to over mark products.Reply -
RedJaron Tom, what would it take to get ASRock to start putting more 4-pin fan headers on their boards? I love their products, been using a Z68 Ex4 Gen3 for three years and just built a friend's machine on an H97M Pro4. But I love quiet PCs. Having PWM signalling for all the chassis fans, and not just the CPU coolers, means it runs as quiet as possible during web surfing and other downtime.Reply