Three-Way X99 LGA 2011-v3 ATX Motherboard Shootout

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Buyers of Intel's X99 platform, which supports Intel's Haswell-E and new DDR4 memory, were probably prepared to pay a premium for mid-market boards. Are any of these $240 to $300 models worthy of Intel’s latest CPUs?

Results: Adobe CC, Productivity And File Compression

Adobe Creative Cloud

The X99 Extreme4 take a small lead in After Effects, though the actual scale of the difference is probably being disguised by the benchmark’s short duration. A millisecond is all it takes to round a number up or down!

The X99-UD4 falls slightly behind in Photoshop’s OpenCL-optimized filters. That difference might be tied to its slightly lower memory bandwidth, as retesting validated this result.

The X99 Extreme4 comes out on top of Acrobat XI as well, though the longer benchmark time make the one-second lead appear smaller.

Productivity

The X99 Extreme4 takes marginal leads in a few benchmarks, but it pulls ahead a little further in 3ds Max. The X99S Gaming 7 gets a small lead in ABBYY FineReader.

File Compression

The X99-UD4 falls slightly behind in 7-Zip and WinZip EZ, which could be due to its lower memory bandwidth.
ASRock X99 Extreme4
Gigabyte X99-UD4
MSI X99S Gaming 7

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
24 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dgingeri
    "LGA 2111-v3"??

    Did something change?
    Reply
  • west7
    In the 3D gaming page it should been i7-5760x not i7-4790 and fix the LGA 2111-v3 typo and why there in no SLI/crossfire test?!
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    12 Phases Six Phases Eight Phases what!
    Reply
  • Daniel Ladishew
    Can't wait for them to review some of the other manufacturer's products in the X99 category. The ASUS board especially.
    Reply
  • chiefpiggy
    Noob question: would my socket 1150 i5 4670k work with one of these motherboards or do I need one of the Haswell-E processors?
    Reply
  • sportfreak23
    14199415 said:
    Can't wait for them to review some of the other manufacturer's products in the X99 category. The ASUS board especially.

    +1
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    14199118 said:
    "LGA 2111-v3"??

    Did something change?
    LGA 2011 uses DDR3 while LGA2011-3 uses DDR4 so the sockets are different to prevent people from putting the wrong CPU in the wrong motherboard.

    I think there were other changes but this is the big obvious one.
    Reply
  • firefoxx04
    it should be mentioned (and maybe it was, just not on the first page) that you only get the 40 pci e lanes if you purchase the two higher tiered haswell-E chips. The lowest end model does not support 40 lanes, I think it supports 28.
    Reply
  • dgingeri
    I was commenting on the typo of "2111" vs "2011".
    Reply
  • vincevdc
    The MB grid on page one shows that the MSI X99S Gaming 7 mb has an Intel Z97 Express chipset. This is a typo...
    Reply