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Firmware, Software and Test System

Firmware

Asus’ ROG Strix Z690-A Gaming WIFI D4 BIOS sports a familiar black-and-red theme. The BIOS is loaded with options and menus, and the most frequently accessed items are easily accessible and not buried several layers down. There’s also an Easy Mode that’s more of a dashboard with limited functionality. We're fans of the Asus BIOS and its logical layout. It has everything you need and then some to tweak your motherboard and component settings. And if you want to know how to access your BIOS (from any system), we can help!

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Software

Asus has applications designed to control the motherboard's various functions, ranging from RGB lighting control to audio, system monitoring, overclocking, etc. Instead of plodding through each application as if it changes for each review, we’ll capture several screenshots of a few major utilities. In this case, here’s a look at Ai Suite 3, Armoury Crate, Sonic Studio III Suite and the Realtek Audio application.

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Test System / Comparison Products

We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 64-bit OS with all updates applied. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms but updated the driver to version 496.13. Additionally, our game selection has been updated, as noted in the table below. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows:

Test System Components

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CPU	Intel Core i9-12900K
Memory	GSkill Trident Z DDR5-5600 CL36 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK)
Row 2 - Cell 0	ADATA XPG Lancer DDR5-6000 CL40 (AX5U6000C4016G-DCLARBK)
Row 3 - Cell 0	GSkill Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 (F4-3600C16Q-32GTZN)
Row 4 - Cell 0	GSkill Trident Z Royal DDR4-4000 (F4-4000C18Q-32GTRS)
GPPU	Asus TUF RTX 3070
Cooling	Coolermaster MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
PSU	EVGA Supernova 850W P6
Software	Windows 11 64-bit (21H2, Build 22000.282)
Graphics Driver	NVIDIA Driver 496.13
Sound	Integrated HD audio
Network	Integrated Networking (GbE or 2.5 GbE)

EVGA supplied our Supernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the outgoing 1.2KW monster we used) for our test systems, and G.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for launch day testing.

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Benchmark Settings

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Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings	Row 0 - Cell 1
Procyon	Version 2.0.249 64
Row 2 - Cell 0	Office Suite, Video Editing (Premiere Pro), Photo Editing (Photoshop, Lightroom Classic)
3DMark	Version 2.20.7290 64
Row 4 - Cell 0	Firestrike Extreme and Time Spy Default Presets
Cinebench R23	Version RBBENCHMARK330542
Row 6 - Cell 0	Open GL Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded
Blender	Version 3.0.1
Row 8 - Cell 0	Full benchmark (all 3 tests)
Application Tests and Settings	Row 9 - Cell 1
LAME MP3	Version SSE2_2019
Row 11 - Cell 0	Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
HandBrake CLI	Version: 1.2.2
Row 13 - Cell 0	Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX)
Corona 1.4	Version 1.4
Row 15 - Cell 0	Custom benchmark
7-Zip	Version 21.03-beta
Row 17 - Cell 0	Integrated benchmark (Command Line)
Game Tests and Settings	Row 18 - Cell 1
Far Cry 6	Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, HD Textures ON
F1 2021	Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, HBAO+, RT Med, TAA + 16xAF, Bahrain, FPS Counter ON