compliment vs. complement (on the important first page) again... so no, not a typo. This sort of homonym misunderstanding shouldn't appear in a professional technical article.
If we are criticizing grammar, try capital letters at the beginning of your sentence. It's a "falls on deaf ears" thing when you fail while attempting to correct someone else. Just a thought.
What sense does 64GB max RAM make on a flagship motherboard for a CPU with 32 cores and 64 threads? I would pair the 2990x with 128GB RAM so this motherboard is immediately disqualified no matter what other properties it may have
There's probably no equipment available to perform those tests. 10G switches and NICs aren't commonplace or affordable right now. Then again, Anandtech has done little in the way of network adapter testing and this article puts the network features of the board in question up as a headline feature, but does not quantify that feature in a comparative benchmark. That's a bit of a miss in my opinion and should be something rectified in the future.
I would think a single 10G NIC would be enough, Startech sells one for $230. Pop that into any motherboard and at least do some simple iperf, "LAN Speed Test" or NetStress. Settle on one and use that going forward.
It's not 4 port but the cheap options are ASUS XG-U2008 & Netgear GS110MX. Also keep it mind you can direct connect two setups together say for a NAS to main rig without a switch. And the benefit of these newer switches and chips is that they're not finicky about what speed they're on; it's dynamic, so 10G, 5G, 2.5G, 1G and 100MB, etc.
Good question, especially as mentioned the board is the Taichi plus the NIC, so the review is actually for the Taichi, not for Taichi Ultimate. LAN testing can be performed with another board with an Aquantia board with no switch, just a direct cable connection. And this board has also 2.5 and 5 Gbps capabilities, it would be interesting to see how well the real throughput scales: it depends a lot on how the chip is connected - how many lanes of which PCIe version. One needs 4x PCIe ver 2 or 2x PCIe ver 3 for full 10 Gbps, but there are not so many available PCIe lanes and the chip may be connected to half or a quarter of what it needs. That way you still get close to 5 Gbps one-way or even 8-9 Gbps one way, assuming the Aquantia chip can do that, but not full duplex 10 Gbps.
Its the same chipset and implementation that Aquantia has been selling on motherboards and add on cards for a while. That would be like testing the i211AT on the other port, its a pretty known quantity at this point.
The implementation can be very different, if only 1 or 2 PCIe 2.0 lanes are linked to the chip the performance is not a known quantity. We know the max speed of the chipset, we don't know how it was implemented on this expensive motherboard.Would you bet your money on a good implementation?
That's a whole lot of work you guys did and I don't mean to discount it in anyway. But it makes me wonder, isn't the point of going for x470 instead of the x370 to take better advantage of what the new processors have to offer? So why go through this full blown review using an older processor? Was the 2700x unavailable at the time you started with this?
games need to be fully scriptable via commandline for automated data collection, which eliminates a number of otherwise popular games. The gamelist itself is updated about once/year (looks like still v2017), but needs to keep a decent fraction of last years list to allow some comparison between new and old reviews.
I suspect the reason is that if they used a 2xxx CPU to test the x470 and B450 boards then they would have to re-test all the x370 and B350 boards in order to make all the tests comparable.
I'm glad to see another motherboard with a 10G NIC, but I'd really like to the new 2.5G protocol start showing up on everything. Surely that can work in situations where the 10G would be to hot.
I wonder why B350 and X370 perform so much better than the new chipset, the differences are quite substantial. Even power draw is lower, and the X370 chipset draws more power than X470!
It must be all those christmas lights on the board :)
A beautiful piece of hardware with the worst bios support. AsRock bios support is garbage, two months ago that board was in really bad shape because of that, the X370 Taichi they have yet to released a decent bios supporting 12 nm CPUs, and there are still a crapload of issues with 14 nm cpus with that bios.
Just check asrock own forums and the Taichi thread on OCN.
My goodness. Im not sure if this comment section is all trolls or just self hating types, but wow is it annoying to read you girls cry about typos or grammar mistakes.
You mention that none of these boards are optimized for DPC latency, yet they best most every Intel board you've listed. What kind of latency is noticeable? The last time I noticed it was in my OLD Core 2 Quad laptop. https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph12706/dpc...
Their hardware might be good but their bios team is just really B A D. FIY they can't even have a fix the basics like a proper "SAVE PROFILE" function that can actually save things on their now more than one year old X370 Taichi. The same board that still uses hexadecimal numbers for memory timings. The same board that doesn't have a functional clockgenerator. The same board have memory badwidth losses up to 20% if manual overclocking is in use. I understand every company is limited on resources but AsRock is just REALLY BAD at supporting their boards.
What is worth a great motherboard with a crap bios ? AVOID ASROCK
I was flaming them with a copypasta in their products so they would hear us because they have been ignoring us for months. Now they seem to be fixing their BIOS so there has been some progress with their bios support, if they keep it Ill stop flaming and even praise them in the future.
In the DPC Latency section of the System Performance page: "While none of the manufacturers of the boards tested on the AM4 socket so far have been optimized for DPC latency,"
Am I to understand that sub 100 us is being considered "not optimized for DPC latency" while only two of the current list of coffee lake tested mobos approach 100 us are?
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asmian - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
compliment vs. complement (on the important first page) again... so no, not a typo. This sort of homonym misunderstanding shouldn't appear in a professional technical article.hansmuff - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
" The consensus is ASRock has gone as all-out as they can with a board listed at $300 "The writing style is very bad for a professional article. Anandtech has a number of writers who really should get some training on writing.
pixelstuff - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Editors are supposed to be the expert on the rules of writing so the topic writer doesn't have to be.Reflex - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
You should apply for a refund.Questor - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
If we are criticizing grammar, try capital letters at the beginning of your sentence. It's a "falls on deaf ears" thing when you fail while attempting to correct someone else. Just a thought.CheapSushi - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
I wish we could downvote comments. It's absolutely trash that this is the first comment that shows up.LJM - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
What sense does 64GB max RAM make on a flagship motherboard for a CPU with 32 cores and 64 threads? I would pair the 2990x with 128GB RAM so this motherboard is immediately disqualified no matter what other properties it may haveBlargh99 - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
This is AM4 not TR4. So I'm interested to see how you get the 2990X to work here.LJM - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Thanks. My mistake.4everalone - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
This is a Ryzen AM4 board, not a TR4 Threadripper board. I believe you may be confusing the two.LJM - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Indeed I was. Thanks.Goty - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
So... no networking tests?PeachNCream - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
There's probably no equipment available to perform those tests. 10G switches and NICs aren't commonplace or affordable right now. Then again, Anandtech has done little in the way of network adapter testing and this article puts the network features of the board in question up as a headline feature, but does not quantify that feature in a comparative benchmark. That's a bit of a miss in my opinion and should be something rectified in the future.hansmuff - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
I would think a single 10G NIC would be enough, Startech sells one for $230. Pop that into any motherboard and at least do some simple iperf, "LAN Speed Test" or NetStress. Settle on one and use that going forward.DigitalFreak - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
No need to even spend that much. You can buy an Aquantia AQC107 NIC for $85.hansmuff - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Huh, nice to know.. are there any 10 Gbps switches in a somewhat affordable range yet ($150-$200 4 port)?CheapSushi - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
It's not 4 port but the cheap options are ASUS XG-U2008 & Netgear GS110MX. Also keep it mind you can direct connect two setups together say for a NAS to main rig without a switch. And the benefit of these newer switches and chips is that they're not finicky about what speed they're on; it's dynamic, so 10G, 5G, 2.5G, 1G and 100MB, etc.AdrianB1 - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Good question, especially as mentioned the board is the Taichi plus the NIC, so the review is actually for the Taichi, not for Taichi Ultimate.LAN testing can be performed with another board with an Aquantia board with no switch, just a direct cable connection. And this board has also 2.5 and 5 Gbps capabilities, it would be interesting to see how well the real throughput scales: it depends a lot on how the chip is connected - how many lanes of which PCIe version. One needs 4x PCIe ver 2 or 2x PCIe ver 3 for full 10 Gbps, but there are not so many available PCIe lanes and the chip may be connected to half or a quarter of what it needs. That way you still get close to 5 Gbps one-way or even 8-9 Gbps one way, assuming the Aquantia chip can do that, but not full duplex 10 Gbps.
DigitalFreak - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Unfortunately Asrock doesn't include a PCI-E diagram in their manual, so there's no way to know. It could be either PCI-E 2.0 x1, x2 or x4.Cygni - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Its the same chipset and implementation that Aquantia has been selling on motherboards and add on cards for a while. That would be like testing the i211AT on the other port, its a pretty known quantity at this point.AdrianB1 - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
The implementation can be very different, if only 1 or 2 PCIe 2.0 lanes are linked to the chip the performance is not a known quantity. We know the max speed of the chipset, we don't know how it was implemented on this expensive motherboard.Would you bet your money on a good implementation?Amoro - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Why is there such a noticeable performance delta? Is that B350 Tomahawk doing some weird overclocking?4everalone - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
That's a whole lot of work you guys did and I don't mean to discount it in anyway. But it makes me wonder, isn't the point of going for x470 instead of the x370 to take better advantage of what the new processors have to offer? So why go through this full blown review using an older processor? Was the 2700x unavailable at the time you started with this?29a - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
They used an odd assortment of games too.DanNeely - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
games need to be fully scriptable via commandline for automated data collection, which eliminates a number of otherwise popular games. The gamelist itself is updated about once/year (looks like still v2017), but needs to keep a decent fraction of last years list to allow some comparison between new and old reviews.Ratman6161 - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
I suspect the reason is that if they used a 2xxx CPU to test the x470 and B450 boards then they would have to re-test all the x370 and B350 boards in order to make all the tests comparable.pixelstuff - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
I'm glad to see another motherboard with a 10G NIC, but I'd really like to the new 2.5G protocol start showing up on everything. Surely that can work in situations where the 10G would be to hot.JlHADJOE - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Dude, you can't just put "Aquantia 10GbE on Ryzen" in the headline and do zero network testing. This review is a total bait and switch!Flappergast - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Please explain why this new top Board is doing 47.8 FPS while the old budget board msi b350 is doing 52.5 FPS in Ashes?WasHopingForAnHonestReview - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
This concerns me. That alone is keeping me from buying one.crotach - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
I wonder why B350 and X370 perform so much better than the new chipset, the differences are quite substantial. Even power draw is lower, and the X370 chipset draws more power than X470!It must be all those christmas lights on the board :)
[email protected] - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
A beautiful piece of hardware with the worst bios support. AsRock bios support is garbage, two months ago that board was in really bad shape because of that, the X370 Taichi they have yet to released a decent bios supporting 12 nm CPUs, and there are still a crapload of issues with 14 nm cpus with that bios.Just check asrock own forums and the Taichi thread on OCN.
WasHopingForAnHonestReview - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
My goodness. Im not sure if this comment section is all trolls or just self hating types, but wow is it annoying to read you girls cry about typos or grammar mistakes.PeachNCream - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
It's annoying to read someone call people girls as if referring to us as female is an insult while at the same time not knowing our genders.WasHopingForAnHonestReview - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
ExactlyTchamber - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
You mention that none of these boards are optimized for DPC latency, yet they best most every Intel board you've listed. What kind of latency is noticeable? The last time I noticed it was in my OLD Core 2 Quad laptop.https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph12706/dpc...
Wolfclaw - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Drop the wifi and put in a couple oi USB2's for older stuff and a thunderbolt.atomicparticle - Wednesday, August 8, 2018 - link
Their hardware might be good but their bios team is just really B A D.FIY they can't even have a fix the basics like a proper "SAVE PROFILE" function that can actually save things on their now more than one year old X370 Taichi. The same board that still uses hexadecimal numbers for memory timings. The same board that doesn't have a functional clockgenerator. The same board have memory badwidth losses up to 20% if manual overclocking is in use.
I understand every company is limited on resources but AsRock is just REALLY BAD at supporting their boards.
What is worth a great motherboard with a crap bios ? AVOID ASROCK
http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=8668&a...
https://www.overclock.net/forum/27481658-post3765....
Dug - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
And the things you listed should be tested under a motherboard review.atomicparticle - Thursday, August 16, 2018 - link
I was flaming them with a copypasta in their products so they would hear us because they have been ignoring us for months. Now they seem to be fixing their BIOS so there has been some progress with their bios support, if they keep it Ill stop flaming and even praise them in the future.willis936 - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
In the DPC Latency section of the System Performance page:"While none of the manufacturers of the boards tested on the AM4 socket so far have been optimized for DPC latency,"
Am I to understand that sub 100 us is being considered "not optimized for DPC latency" while only two of the current list of coffee lake tested mobos approach 100 us are?
From the ASUS B360 review today:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13105/the-asus-b360...
"Our DPC latency results for the B360-G Gaming 122 µs which is about par for the course after our minor script adjustments."
Is this an oversight or is there something I'm missing? It looks like the AM4 platform is currently ahead of coffee lake in terms of DPC latency.