We have reviewed a lot of X299 based motherboards over the past couple of months, but our first Gigabyte/AORUS offering is the X299 Gaming 7 Pro. The G7P promises a slew of full-length PCIe slots, three M.2 slots with heatsinks, more USB 3.1 ports than most could use, and enough RGB LED lighting to have a full-on disco in a PC. See the details in our review, and bring sunglasses!

The X299 Gaming 7 Pro Overview

The Gaming 7 Pro fits in at towards the top of the GIGABYTE X299 product stack, slotted just below the Gaming 9 and flagship Designare EX. The G7P offers users 3-Way SLI and Crossfire capabilities, three M.2 slots each with their own heatsink, a robust dual heatsinked power delivery with an additional fan, several USB 3.1 ports, and enough RGB LEDs to light up a room. If a user wanted a PC disco, this is the motherboard to have.

GIGABYTE started its premium brand of gaming-focused AORUS products a couple of years back, with the intention to offer 'the most extreme gaming experiences for enthusiasts worldwide'. The AORUS product line ranges from gaming laptops to graphics cards, mechanical gaming keyboards, motherboards, and other hardware, aiming to give the brand a presence in the market. The devices are easily distinguished by the name itself as well as the Falcon symbol representing the lineup gracing the packaging and products. 

The GIGABYTE motherboard lineup for X299 has, at the time of writing, eleven motherboards. To emphasise the the AORUS brand importance, there are seven boards in that mix with the AORUS name. There are only a few non-AORUS boards available, in fact. The lineup starts at the entry level with the X299 AORUS Gaming and tops out at the Gaming 9. 

On the performance side, the X299 Gaming 7 Pro performed well overall, running with the pack on nearly all of the benchmarks. The G7P has a form of Multi-Core Enhancement (MCE) enabled by default as it takes all benchmarks to the 3.6 GHz range. The board did excel in boot times, taking over the crown as the fastest board we have recently tested. The rest of the results were right in the middle of the boards we have looked at.

Overclocking was simple, with our new 7900X CPU topping out at 4.7 GHz and we hit our temperature limit (unfortunately we have had to swap out the previous CPU). This 7900X sample is a lot better of an overclocker, and so we should expect subsequent boards to also reach this value. With that said, the power delivery heatsink on the G7P stayed warm to the touch, peaking at 63C in our extended stress testing while clocked to 4.5 GHz.

The G7P allows users to have nearly the full run of storage connectivity. There are eight SATA ports and three M.2 slots, with the M.2 slots all coming with pre-supplied heatsinks. The top and bottom M.2 slots support both PCIe and SATA drives while the middle slot supports PCIe type modules only. There is some sharing going on, as when using the bottom M.2 slot, SATA ports 4/5/6/7 will be disabled.

The board comes with five full-length PCIe slots with positions 1, 3, and 5. These are the CPU connected slots and intended for use with video cards. PCIe slots 2 (x4) and 4 (x4) are both connected via the chipset. For connectivity, there is a total of five USB 3.1 10 Gbps ports on the back (4x Type-A, 1x Type-C) with another onboard header for additional front panel ports. Some of these are handled by ASMedia 3142 controllers, while others are using a Realtek solution, and this is the first board we have seen to use a Realtek USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) solution so far. This is also the most USB 10 Gbps connectivity we have seen on an X299 board so far.

For networking, GIGABYTE has enabled an Intel I219-V NIC as well as a Rivet Networks Killer E2500 NIC alongside 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Audio comes via the Realtek ALC1220 codec.

As far as pricing goes, we do not have anything concrete at the time of this writing and have reached out to GIGABYTE for an answer. The Gaming 7 (non-Pro) is priced at $400 from both Newegg and Amazon, so we expect the Pro version with the added Wi-Fi to be priced a bit higher. The $400+ price tag puts it at the higher end and competing with boards like the MSI X299 XPower Gaming AC ($440), The ASUS ROG Rampage VI Apex ($430), and the ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Professional Gaming i9 XE ($423). Prospective buyers will have to dig into the features to really see differences at this price point. For example, some boards offer a U.2 port or more than eight SATA ports, or buyers may look for a board with specific features. 

GIGABYTE/AORUS X299 Strategy

GIGABYTE has brought a total of eleven boards to market on the X299 chipset so far, 7 of them under the AORUS branding. The pricing starts at $210 with the entry-level AORUS Gaming and goes up to the Gaming 9 which hits the $500 mark. Sprinkled between the bookends are boards that will vary in features, appearance, and price filling in the gaps. The only thing missing in the lineup are MicroATX and Mini-ITX boards. 

GIGABYTE X299 Motherboard Lineup (12/19)
	AnandTech Review	Amazon	Newegg
X299 AORUS Gaming 9	upcoming	$500	$500
X299 Designare EX		-	$450
X299 AORUS Gaming 7 Pro	this review	-	-
X299 AORUS Gaming 7		$400	$400
X299 AORUS Ultra Gaming Pro		-	$350
X299 AORUS Ultra Gaming		$340	$340
X299 AORUS Gaming 3		$263	$268
X299 UD4	requested	$240	$263
X299 UD4 Pro		-	-
X299 UD4 EX		-	-
X299 AORUS Gaming		-	$210

 

Information on Intel's X299 and our other Reviews

With Intel's release of the Basin Falls platform, encompassing the new X299 chipset and LGA2066 socket, a new generation of CPUs called Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X were also released. The Skylake-X CPUs range from the 7800X, a hex-core part, all the way up to an 18-core 7980XE multitasking behemoth. Between the bookend CPUs are five others increasing in core count, as in the table below. The latter HCC models are set to be launched over 2H of 2017.

Skylake-X Processors
	7800X	7820X	7900X		7920X	7940X	7960X	7980XE
Silicon	LCC				HCC
Cores / Threads	6/12	8/16	10/20		12/24	14/28	16/32	18/36
Base Clock / GHz	3.5	3.6	3.3		2.9	3.1	2.8	2.6
Turbo Clock / GHz	4.0	4.3	4.3		4.3	4.3	4.3	4.2
Turbo Max Clock	N/A	4.5	4.5		4.4	4.4	4.4	4.4
L3	1.375 MB/core				1.375 MB/core
PCIe Lanes	28		44		44
Memory Channels	4				4
Memory Freq DDR4	2400	2666			2666
TDP	140W				140W	165W
Price	$389	$599	$999		$1199	$1399	$1699	$1999

Board partners have launched dozens of motherboards.

Other AnandTech Reviews for Intel’s Basin Falls CPUs and X299

Prices checked Jan 25th

• The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X Tested
• The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9-7900X, i7-7820X and i7-7800X Tested
• The Intel Kaby Lake-X Review: Core i7-7740X and i5-7640X Tested
• Intel Announces Basin Falls: The New High-End Desktop Platform and X299 Chipset
   
• ($400) The ASRock X299E-ITX/ac Review [link] 
• ($400) The GIGABYTE X299 Gaming 7 Pro Review (this review)
• ($390) The ASRock X299 Professional Gaming i9 Review [link] 
• ($370) The ASUS Strix X299-XE Gaming Review [link] 
• ($350) The MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon Review [link] 
• ($340) The ASUS X299 TUF Mark 1 Review [link] 
• ($290) The ASRock X299 Taichi Review [link]
• ($280) The MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic Review [link]
• ($260) The MSI X299 SLI Plus Review [link]
   
• ($500) The GIGABYTE X299 Gaming 9 Review (planned) 
• ($490) The ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe Review (testing)
• ($330) The EVGA X299 FTW-K Review(in editing)
• ($290) The EVGA X299 Micro Review (in editing)
• ($286) The MSI X299M Gaming Pro Carbon AC Review (testing)
• ($199) The ASRock X299 Extreme4 Review (testing)
• ($?) The EVGA X299 Dark (planned)

To read specifically about the X299 chip/platform and the specifications therein, our deep dive into what it is can be found at this link.

X299 Motherboard Review Notice

If you’ve been following the minutiae of the saga of X299 motherboards, you might have heard some issues regarding power delivery, overclocking, and the ability to cool these processors down given the power consumption. In a nutshell, it comes down to this:

• Skylake-X consumes a lot of power at peak (150W+),
• The thermal interface inside the CPU doesn’t do much requiring a powerful CPU cooler,
• Some motherboard vendors apply Multi-Core Turbo which raises the power consumption and voltage, exacerbating the issue
• The VRMs have to deal with more power, and due to losses, raise in temperature
• Some motherboards do not have sufficient VRM cooling without an active cooler
• This causes the CPU to declock or hit thermal power states as to not degrade components
• This causes a performance drop, and overclocked systems are affected even more than usual

There has been some excellent work done by Igor Wallossek over at Tom’s Hardware, with thermal probes, thermal cameras, and performance analysis. The bottom line is that motherboard vendors need to be careful when it comes to default settings (if MCT is enabled by default) and provide sufficient VRM cooling in all scenarios – either larger and heavier heatsinks or moving back to active cooling. 

X299 Gaming 7 Pro Visual Inspection

If you wanted LEDs, this motherboard has them. In spades. Not only in the usual places, such as the chipset heatsink, but the rear-IO panel, the rear-IO shroud, in-between each of the DRAM slots, and for good measure, on the PCIe slots as well.

At first glance, the X299 Gaming 7 Pro (hereafter, G7P) looks a bit of busy of a motherboard without the light show of RGB LEDs. The memory and PCIe slots all use slot reinforcement and have RGB lighting on them creating a contrast to the black board. In addition to those locations, both shrouds on the left and the chipset heatsink also have RGB LEDs. They are almost all over this board. 

The power delivery heatsink up top has small slits cut into it to try and improve surface area, although this is not much of an overall change. There is a heat pipe which routes around the left memory slots and under the back panel shroud to connect to a second, hidden heatsink. This should do a better job than X299 boards with a single heatsink, especially with the included fan (pictured later) blowing on that secondary heatsink. Also with heatsinks are the three M.2 slots, which is something we find only on premium boards. 

  

Starting with fan headers, the X299 Gaming 7 Pro is equipped with eight 4-pin headers. At the top, there are three headers, Sys Fan 2, CPU, and CPU Opt. The right side of the board is Sys Fan 6/Pump and Sys Fan 5. On the bottom of the board between the debug LED and USB headers are two more system fan headers, and finally, above the top PCIe slot to the left of the memory slots is Sys Fan 1. All headers offer both PWM and voltage control. Gigabyte's Smart Fan 5 software in the BIOS or within the App Center are able to use preset profiles or custom fan curves. 

The power delivery on the Gaming 7 Pro is a 12-phase (6 doubled) using 60A power stages. Controlling these is the Intersil ISL69138 6+1 phase, true digital PWM. The additional phase is used for VCCSA. The power stages use an ISL99227 Smart Power stage rated to 60A while the phase doubling duty is handled by six ISL6617 found on the back of the motherboard. Delivering power to the CPU are two 8-pin EPS 12V plugs (only one is required for regular use). 

The eight DRAM slots on the AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro are unlike others we have seen in the past. They do come with slot reinforcement for additional support for those 'heavy' DIMMs, but that isn't the unique part. What is unique are the RGB LEDs and lighting between them illuminating the sticks in the slots. Using this method, it allows GIGABYTE to have a regular positioning of the memory slots (which isn't always the case, making some boards unsightly). Supported memory speeds are up to DDR4-4400, with a maximum capacity at the typical 128GB for an X299 motherboard. Technically the board also supports RDIMMs for 512GB capacity, however none of the CPUs for this motherboard support RDIMMs with ECC. Unlike most boards we have reviewed lately, there are two locking mechanisms for the DRAM modules. After using plenty of boards with only one latch, two latches feels a bit clunky comparatively, but allows for a firm insertion. 

The right-hand side of the board has 8 SATA ports (on the left of the picture below). The middle of this area has a USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) port, a USB 3.0 header, a couple of fan headers, and the 24-pin ATX plug. 

This image displays the eight SATA ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. The board does not come with a U.2 connector. 

Across the bottom of the motherboard, there are several IO options and buttons. From left to right we see:

• Front Panel Audio
• RGBW 5-pin
• RGB Voltage Selection Jumper
• TPM Header
• ECO/OC/RESET/POWER buttons
• 2 x Front Panel USB 2.0/1.1 Headers
• 2 x Fan Headers
• Debug LED
• USB 3.0 Header
• Front Panel Header

For PCIe, the X299 Gaming 7 Pro has a total of five full-length PCIe slots all reinforced to help support heavy video cards. In addition to the slot reinforcement, each PCIe slot has RGB LEDs surrounding the slot and is another area controlled by the RGB Fusion software. There are no physical x4 or x1 slots, allowing all full-length cards. The primary GPU slots, from top to bottom, are slots one, three, and five, which have a maximum bandwidth of x16/x16/x8 and support both 3-Way SLI and Crossfire configurations. The other two slots are a maximum x4 and are connected through the chipset. 

Audio duties are handled by the Realtek ALC 1220 audio codec with an ESS Sabre reference DAC, WIMA and Nichicon audiophile grade capacitors, as well as independenent analog power to delive clean power to the audio components. 

Below is a simplified list of how the PCIe slots will work with each family of CPUs (talking PCIe lanes) when multiple cards are used (the "@" symbol is used to show slot preference for the configuration): 

AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro CPU PCIe Layout
	44-Lane 1/2-Way	44-Lane 3-Way	28-Lane 1/2-Way	28-Lane 3-Way	16-Lane 1-Way	16-Lane 2-Way
PCIe 1	@x16	x16	@x16	x8	@x8	@x8
PCIe 3	@x16	x16	@x8	x8	-	@x4
PCIe 5	x8	x8	-	x8	-	-
SLI	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	-	No
Crossfire	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	-	Yes

The back panel IO consists of: 

• PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port
• 4 x USB 3.1 5 Gbps Ports
• 1 x USB 3.1 10 Gbps Type-C Port
• 4 x USB 3.1 10 Gbps Type-A Ports
• 2 RJ-45 Ports
• Wi-Fi/BT Module
• 5-plug Gold-plated Audio Stack w/ SPDIF

If you look closely we are able to see the small fan attached to the secondary VRM heatsink just above the USB Type-C port as well. 

In the Box

• Driver Disk / User's Manual / Installation Guide / A lot of Stickers
• 2-Way Hard SLI Bridge
• Wi-Fi Antenna
• 4 x SATA Cables
• 2 x Temperature Probes
• RGB LED Extensions
• Back Panel IO Plate
• Velcro Straps

For a gaming motherboard, aside from some gimmick addition, this is about what we would expect in the box.

BIOS

Our first glimpse of the Gigabyte BIOS brings us to the "Classic" style BIOS. Upon entry, useres are placed in the M.I.T (Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker) section. This fairly uninformative first screen is where users will dive into system changes from frequency, memory, and voltage settings, to PC Health Status and Smart Fan 5 settings. Other motherboard manufacturers boot into a status screen-like environment, with system information on it, or into an Easy Mode first, but this board does not and drops the user right in the middle of it. 

The BIOS still has an easy mode, via a mouse click on the bottom menu or by pressing F2. With this, we are now able to see system information from temperatures, voltage, DRAM Status, Boot order, fan profiles, and an area to adjust attached fans via Smart Fan 5 options. 

Within Easy Mode is an EZ OC section with settings for Normal (default), Performance, and Saving. The performance mode raises the turbo boost clocks a couple of bins on each set of cores. So two threads will run at 4.7 GHz (from 4.5), While all core boost is raised to 4 GHz. 

Back into the classic mode, and inside the Advanced Frequency section are options to edit BCLK, CPU and Memory Multiplier as well as XMP settings. Inside the Advanced CPU Core settings are more options such as per core overclocking, AVX offsets, as well as power limit, C-State, and other CPU adjustments. While most of what is needed here on this screen, I would have liked to see voltage adjustments here as well so it is a bit easier to adjust everything from one screen. 

 

Within the Advanced Memory Section are all the options needed to adjust memory. We again see the XMP option and memory multiplier but now it is surrounded by other options for memory timings/sub timings adjustments and memory enhancement features. 

Once in Advanced Power settings, we are greeted by another set of sub-sections for CPU Core, Chipset, and DRAM Voltage control. The Advanced Power Settings sub-heading is where users will find LLC control if needed. Each section handles its own domain with the Core Voltage controlling VCore, Mesh, VRIN, VCCIO, and PLL voltages for the CPU. The Chipset heading has one option in it for the chipset voltage (PCH Core) while the DRAM Voltage section has options for each channel and its termination voltage. This is a section I would like to see condensed into one for ease of use. Users shouldn't have to have a section for each voltage/domain. 

The System Section across the top holds information about the board and its BIOS version, System Date/Time, and default language. 

The BIOS heading supplies users with information on boot such as displaying the logo, boot options, fast boot, and other boot-related functions including Fast Boot and PXE boot among other boot-related options. 

The Peripherals section is where adjustments to USB, SATA, the LAN Controller and Network Stack, and LEDs are found. These modes can be changed or enabled and disabled from within this section. 

The Chipset section users will find controls for VT-d and VMD technology as well as the audio and PCH LAN controller in case those needed disabled. 

The Power Section is where users have control over anything power on/off related including adjustments for how the power button behaves, and what the PC will do after power loss (AC BACK). 

The Save and Exit Section is where users are able to load optimized defaults, override the set boot device (for one reboot), as well as an option to save and load BIOS profiles. 

All BIOS screens are found in the gallery below.

Software

The driver disk includes all the drivers needed and software which GIGABYTE provides. Users are able to 'Xpress Install' all or select each item to be installed. All drivers were installed from the disk successfully. Also included on the disk are additional applications including the App Center, a central location for Gigabyte Software, and the dozen or so pieces of software it offers. We have installed the @BIOS software, Easy Tune, Gigabyte HW OC App (phone based monitoring and overclocking), the RGB Fusion application, as well as a Smart Backup program to backup the system in case of failure. 

The GIGABYTE App Center is a piece of software designed to organize all the applications they have to offer. There are over a dozen different selections ranging from BIOS flashing, overclocking, RGB LED, and even backups. The App Center runs on startup and is accessible from the tray icons in the bottom right corner. The App Center is a useful place to consolidate the many different programs they offer for this motherboard. 

Below is a screenshot of the @BIOS application which allows users to identify the BIOS details such as the version, flash type and size, as well as the vendor. The app allows users to flash their BIOS from a file or pull the latest from the website. I always like to flash the BIOS from the BIOS itself, but, these types of applications have made their way to the mainstream it seems. I was unable to test out the functionality as the board came equipped with the latest (and only) BIOS currently out for this motherboard. 

Next is the Easy Tune software, which is GIGABYTE's monitoring and overclocking application for Windows. This software monitors all the major voltages and settings across the bottom and depending on which tab is open, determines what is displayed. In the case of Smart Boost are overclocking it lists preset options for overclocking, as well as an auto-tuning function. The Advanced CPU and Advanced DDR tabs list options for overclocking the CPU and adjusting RAM timings. I did not touch the RAM selections (I prefer to do that from the BIOS) but played with the CPU multiplier and voltage without issue.

 

The Killer Control Center app is used to monitor and make changes to the Killer LAN port on the board. It allows to set limits on speed, prioritize traffic to improve latency, and a Wi-Fi Analyzer. 

GIGABYTE's take on software control of their RGB LED ecosystem is named RGB Fusion. This application controls how the RGB LEDs act, or react, on the board. Pictured below is the basic tab where we see nine different preset patterns to choose from. The Advanced section gives even finer-grained control over each of the zones while in the Intelligent tab colors can be attached to a number of different events such as CPU temperature or use, CPU fan, via a schedule, and others. RGB Fusion has a lot of options for controlling system lighting and achieving the right lighting scheme for any user. 

In addition to the Realtek software for control over the audio, Gigabyte has Sound Blaster Connect to control 3D effects as well as the sound itself through an equalizer. With the BlasterX Experience, users can setup specific sound environments for each activity or game. 

Board Features

Aside from the RGB LEDs, the key additional features on this board are the dual network interfaces bundled with the Wi-Fi, the use of three M.2 slots for storage (with heatsinks), and having all the PCIe slots as full length slots, which is something usually only seen on higher-end workstation motherboards. GIGABYTE also pulls the stops out on USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) support, using a Realtek hub to expand the ASMedia ASM3142 ports available. Of course this has knock-on effects for combined bandwidth, but it is still relatively new to see this type of port be expanded in this way.

AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro
Warranty Period	3 Years
Product Page	Link
Price	N/A
Size	ATX
CPU Interface	LGA2066
Chipset	Intel X299
Memory Slots (DDR4)	Eight DDR4 Supporting 128GB Quad Channel Up to DDR4-4400
Network Connectivity / Wi-Fi	1 x Intel I219V GbE 1 x Rivet Networks Killer E2500 GbE Killer Wireless-AC 1535 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1
Onboard Audio	Realtek ALC 1220
PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU)	3 x PCIe 3.0 - 44 Lane CPU: x16/x16/x8  - 28 Lane CPU: x8/x8/x8  - 16 Lane CPU: x8/x4
PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH)	2 x PCIe 3.0 x4
Onboard SATA	8 x RAID 0/1/5/10
Onboard SATA Express	None
Onboard M.2	2 x PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA modes 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 mode only
Onboard U.2	None
USB 3.1	Chipset + ASMedia ASM3142  1 x Onboard Header 1 x Type-C (Back Panel Chipset + Realtek G2 Hub 4 x Type-A ports (Red - Back Panel)
USB 3.0	Chipset 4 x Type-A (Back Panel) 4 x Onboard Headers
USB 2.0	Chipset 4 x Onboard Headers
Power Connectors	1 x 24-pin ATX 1 x 8-pin CPU 1 x 8-pin CPU (optional)
Fan Headers	1 x 4-pin CPU 1 x 4-pin CPU OPT 6 x 4-pin Sys Fan
IO Panel	1 x PS/2 port 2 x LAN (RJ45) ports 5 x USB 3.1 10 Gbps Type-A 1 x USB 3.1 10 Gbps Type-C 2 x USB 3.0 1 x SPDIF out 5 x Audio Jacks 1 x Killer Wireless AC Module

For a board of this price, what is missing is really a U.2 port, however GIGABYTE will state that with so many M.2 ports, using an M.2 to U.2 converter will have to come into play here.

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC sub timings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend our testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency/monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

Test Setup
Processor	****Intel i9 7900X (10C/20T, 3.3G, 140W)****
Motherboard	AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro (BIOS version F1)
Cooling	Corsair H115i
Power Supply	Corsair HX750
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 4x8GB DDR4 2666 CL16 Corsair Vengeance 4x4GB DDR4 3200 CL16
Memory Settings	DDR4 2666 CL16-18-18-35 2T
Video Cards	ASUS Strix GTX 980
Hard Drive	Crucial MX300 1TB
Optical Drive	TSST TS-H653G
Case	Open Test Bed
Operating System	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

**** Please note due to circumstances out of our control we were forced to use a new CPU for this motherboard and the remainder of our X299 testing. While this switch will not affect the majority of results, it will have an effect on our power testing and overclocking. The stock voltage will be different as will the voltage needed to overclock. Because of this, the power testing and overclocking results are not directly comparable. They are noted by an asterisk in the results for clarity. 

Many thanks to...

We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this testbed specifically but is used in other testing.

Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs. At the time of release, the STRIX brand from ASUS was aimed at silent running, or to use the marketing term: '0dB Silent Gaming'. This enables the card to disable the fans when the GPU is dealing with low loads well within temperature specifications. These cards equip the GTX 980 silicon with ASUS' Direct CU II cooler and 10-phase digital VRMs, aimed at high-efficiency conversion. Along with the card, ASUS bundles GPU Tweak software for overclocking and streaming assistance.

The GTX 980 uses NVIDIA's GM204 silicon die, built upon their Maxwell architecture. This die is 5.2 billion transistors for a die size of 298 mm², built on TMSC's 28nm process. A GTX 980 uses the full GM204 core, with 2048 CUDA Cores and 64 ROPs with a 256-bit memory bus to GDDR5. The official power rating for the GTX 980 is 165W.

The ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB (or the full name of STRIX-GTX980-DC2OC-4GD5) runs a reasonable overclock over a reference GTX 980 card, with frequencies in the range of 1178-1279 MHz. The memory runs at stock, in this case, 7010 MHz. Video outputs include three DisplayPort connectors, one HDMI 2.0 connector, and a DVI-I.

Further Reading: AnandTech's NVIDIA GTX 980 Review

 

Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX300 SSDs. Crucial stepped up to the plate as our benchmark list grows larger with newer benchmarks and titles, and the 1TB MX300 units are strong performers. Based on Marvell's 88SS1074 controller and using Micron's 384Gbit 32-layer 3D TLC NAND, these are 7mm high, 2.5-inch drives rated for 92K random read IOPS and 530/510 MB/s sequential read and write speeds.

The 1TB models we are using here support TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (eDrive) encryption and have a 360TB rated endurance with a three-year warranty.

Further Reading: AnandTech's Crucial MX300 (750 GB) Review

 

Thank you to Corsair for providing us with Vengeance LPX DDR4 Memory, HX750 Power Supply, and H115i CPU Cooler. 

Corsair kindly sent a 4x8GB DDR4 2666 set of their Vengeance LPX low profile, high-performance memory for our stock testing. The heatsink is made of pure aluminum to help remove heat from the sticks and has an eight-layer PCB. The heatsink is a low profile design to help fit in spaces where there may not be room for a tall heat spreader; think a SFF case or using a large heatsink. Timings on this specific set come in at 16-18-18-35. The Vengeance LPX line supports XMP 2.0 profiles for easily setting the speed and timings. It also comes with a limited lifetime warranty. 

Powering the test system is Corsair's HX750 Power Supply. This HX750 is a dual mode unit able to switch from a single 12V rail (62.5A/750W) to a five rail CPU (40A max ea.) and is also fully modular. It has a typical selection of connectors, including dual EPS 4+4 pin four PCIe connectors and a whopping 16 SATA power leads, as well as four 4-pin Molex connectors.

The 135mm fluid dynamic bearing fan remains off until it is 40% loaded offering complete silence in light workloads. The HX750 comes with a ten-year warranty. 

In order to cool these high-TDP HEDT CPUs, Corsair sent over its latest and largest AIO in the H115i. This closed-loop system uses a 280mm radiator with 2x140mm SP140L PWM controlled fans. The pump/block combination mounts to all modern CPU sockets. Users are also able to integrate this cooler into the Corsair link software via USB for more control and options. 

Benchmark Overview

For our testing, depending on the product, we attempt to tailor the presentation of our global benchmark suite down into what users who would buy this hardware might actually want to run. For CPUs, our full test suite is typically used to gather data and all the results are placed into Bench, our benchmark database for users that want to look at non-typical benchmarks or legacy data. For motherboards, we run our short form CPU tests, the gaming tests with half the GPUs of our processor suite, and our system benchmark tests which focus on non-typical and non-obvious performance metrics that are the focal point for specific groups of users.

The benchmarks fall into several areas:

Short Form CPU

Our short form testing script uses a straight run through of a mixture of known apps or workloads and requires about four hours. These are typically the CPU tests we run in our motherboard suite, to identify any performance anomalies.

CPU Short Form Benchmarks
Three Dimensional Particle Movement v2.1 (3DPM)	3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, derived from my academic research years looking at particle movement parallelism. The coding for this tool was rough, but emulates the real world in being non-CompSci trained code for a scientific endeavor. The code is unoptimized, but the test uses OpenMP to move particles around a field using one of six 3D movement algorithms in turn, each of which is found in the academic literature.
	The second version of this benchmark is similar to the first, however it has been re-written in VS2012 with one major difference: the code has been written to address the issue of false sharing. If data required by multiple threads, say four, is in the same cache line, the software cannot read the cache line once and split the data to each thread - instead it will read four times in a serial fashion. The new software splits the data to new cache lines so reads can be parallelized and stalls minimized.
WinRAR 5.4	WinRAR is a compression based software to reduce file size at the expense of CPU cycles. We use the version that has been a stable part of our benchmark database through 2015, and run the default settings on a 1.52GB directory containing over 2800 files representing a small website with around thirty half-minute videos. We take the average of several runs in this instance.
POV-Ray 3.7.1 b4	POV-Ray is a common ray-tracing tool used to generate realistic looking scenes. We've used POV-Ray in its various guises over the years as a good benchmark for performance, as well as a tool on the march to ray-tracing limited immersive environments. We use the built-in multi threaded benchmark.
HandBrake v1.0.2	HandBrake is a freeware video conversion tool. We use the tool in to process two different videos into x264 in an MP4 container - first a 'low quality' two-hour video at 640x388 resolution to x264, then a 'high quality' ten-minute video at 4320x3840, and finally the second video again but into HEVC. The low-quality video scales at lower performance hardware, whereas the buffers required for high-quality tests can stretch even the biggest processors. At current, this is a CPU only test.
7-Zip 9.2	7-Zip is a freeware compression/decompression tool that is widely deployed across the world. We run the included benchmark tool using a 50MB library and take the average of a set of fixed-time results.
DigiCortex v1.20	The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up.

 

System Benchmarks

Our system benchmarks are designed to probe motherboard controller performance, particularly any additional USB controllers or the audio controller. As general platform tests we have DPC Latency measurements and system boot time, which can be difficult to optimize for on the board design and manufacturing level.

System Benchmarks
Power Consumption	One of the primary differences between different motherboads is power consumption. Aside from the base defaults that every motherboard needs, things like power delivery, controller choice, routing and firmware can all contribute to how much power a system can draw. This increases for features such as PLX chips and multi-gigabit ethernet.
Non-UEFI POST Time	The POST sequence of the motherboard becomes before loading the OS, and involves pre-testing of onboard controllers, the CPU, the DRAM and everything else to ensure base stability. The number of controllers, as well as firmware optimizations, affect the POST time a lot. We test the BIOS defaults as well as attempt a stripped POST.
Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5	Testing onboard audio is difficult, especially with the numerous amount of post-processing packages now being bundled with hardware. Nonetheless, manufacturers put time and effort into offering a 'cleaner' sound that is loud and of a high quality. RMAA, with version 6.2.5 (newer versions have issues), under the right settings can be used to test the signal-to-noise ratio, signal crossover, and harmonic distortion with noise.
USB Backup	USB ports can come from a variety of sources: chipsets, controllers or hubs. More often than not, the design of the traces can lead to direct impacts on USB performance as well as firmware level choices relating to signal integrity on the motherboard.
DPC Latency	Another element is deferred procedure call latency, or the ability to handle interrupt servicing. Depending on the motherboard firmware and controller selection, some motherboards handle these interrupts quicker than others. A poor result could lead to delays in performance, or for example with audio, a delayed request can manifest in distinct audible pauses, pops or clicks.

Gaming

Our gaming benchmarks are designed to show any differences in performance when playing games. 

System Performance

Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested.

Power Consumption

Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single GPU configuration with a wall meter connected to the Corsair HX 750 power supply. This power supply is Platinum rated. As I am in the US on a 120 V supply, leads to ~87% efficiency > 75W, and 92%+ efficiency at 375W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.

While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.

In our long idle testing, the AORUS X299 Gaming 7 ended up with a middle of the pack result overall. This results shows the board is in line with most others in the way it handles clockspeeds within this test. 

Non-UEFI POST Time

Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we look at the POST Boot Time using a stopwatch. This is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows 10 starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.

Post times for the AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro lead the pack with a time of 24.4 seconds. This is a small margin of victory over the EVGA FTW-K and the ASRock Mini-ITX board.

Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5

Rightmark:AA indicates how well the sound system is built and isolated from electrical interference (either internally or externally). For this test we connect the Line Out to the Line In using a short six inch 3.5mm to 3.5mm high-quality jack, turn the OS speaker volume to 100%, and run the Rightmark default test suite at 192 kHz, 24-bit. The OS is tuned to 192 kHz/24-bit input and output, and the Line-In volume is adjusted until we have the best RMAA value in the mini-pretest. We look specifically at the Dynamic Range of the audio codec used on board, as well as the Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise.

Due to circumstances currently out of our control, we were unable to get RMAA results for this board. The problem does not lie with the board itself. Once we are able to get it working properly, the space will be updated with data. 

DPC Latency

Deferred Procedure Call latency is a way in which Windows handles interrupt servicing. In order to wait for a processor to acknowledge the request, the system will queue all interrupt requests by priority. Critical interrupts will be handled as soon as possible, whereas lesser priority requests such as audio will be further down the line. If the audio device requires data, it will have to wait until the request is processed before the buffer is filled.

If the device drivers of higher priority components in a system are poorly implemented, this can cause delays in request scheduling and process time. This can lead to an empty audio buffer and characteristic audible pauses, pops and clicks. The DPC latency checker measures how much time is taken processing DPCs from driver invocation. The lower the value will result in better audio transfer at smaller buffer sizes. Results are measured in microseconds. 

DPC Latency is in the expected range, below 300. The Gaming 7 Pro was a middle of the pack result of 265 microseconds. No issues here either.

CPU Performance, Short Form

For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We leave the BIOS settings at default and memory at JEDEC for the supported frequency of the processor for these tests, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.

Rendering - Blender 2.78: link

For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.

In our Blender results, the Gaming 7 Pro sits on the upper-middle side of the results completing the benchmark in 203 seconds. This data point again shows the CPU able to clock up to the 3.6 GHz value we see most boards tackle this testing at. 

Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7: link

The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high-end platforms.

POV-Ray often becomes sensitive to immediate frequency, with the MCE boards taking the lead. The Gaming 7 Pro scores right in the middle of the pack at 4,622.  The CPU boosted to 3.6 GHz like many others do in this testing outside of the EVGA boards who revert back to base clock for whatever reason. 

Compression – WinRAR 5.4: link

Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30-second 720p videos.

WinRAR results put the AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro in the lower-middle part of the pack here at 35.2 seconds. 

Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link

As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.

The 7-Zip results land the AORUS offering in the middle of the very tightly packed datasets. In this test, the CPU boosted to 4GHz as did the majority in this group. The outlier was by our MSI top result, but was repeatable. 

Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link

3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz, and IPC win in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.

Similarly, the 3DPM result puts the AORUS board in the middle of the pack. During this test it performs six mini tests with a 10-second gap between them: our result were from a 3.6 GHz CPU clockspeed during the test. 

Neuron Simulation - DigiCortex v1.20: link

The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. Results are taken during the steady state period in a 32k neuron simulation and represented as a function of the ability to simulate in real time (1.000x equals real-time).

In the DigiCortex testing, the AORUS is wedged in with the other results with a 1.14 result and is part of a tightly packed set of data. The only outlier here is again the MSI Gaming Pro Carbon AC which seems to throw little caution to the wind for performance sake. 

Gaming Performance

Ashes of the Singularity is a Real Time Strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The original AoTS was released back in March of 2016 while the standalone expansion pack, Escalation, was released in November of 2016 adding more structures, maps, and units. We use this specific benchmark as it relies on both a good GPU as well as on the CPU in order to get the most frames per second. This balance is able to better display any system differences in gaming as opposed to a more GPU heavy title where the CPU and system don't matter quite as much. We use the default "Crazy" in-game settings using the DX11 rendering path in both 1080p and 4K UHD resolutions. The benchmark is run four times and the results averaged then plugged into the graph. 

Our AOTSe testing continues to be a tight-knit dataset with almost 2 frames per second separating things in the more CPU heavy 1080p and less than 1 frame per second in 4K.  The Gaming 7 Pro fit right in with 43.7 FPS at 1080p and 35 FPS in 4K UHD.  

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.

One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.

Rise of the Tomb Raider results are also remarkably close together with the Gaming 7 Pro delivering 93 FPS at 1080p and 39.9 FPS using 4K UHD resolution. 

Overclocking

Experience with the AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro

We first need to remind readers we are using a different CPU than with the previous overclocking results. With that in mind, comparing this board's results with others would not be valid as they are two dramatically different CPUs as far as overclocking ability goes. As you will see below, the retail 7900X we will be using to close out the X299 motherboard reviews is notably better voltage and temperature wise at the same clock speeds. In fact, we were able to push to 4.7 GHz in our testing versus topping out at 4.5 GHz with the previous processor. 

That out of the way, overclocking using the Gaming 7 Pro was pretty easy and straightforward. The board does have automatic overclocking from the BIOS and we tried that out first. Moving to the 'performance' mode really didn't change much honestly. All core clocks raised to 4 GHz, but an AVX offset of -3 was added. Even with the AVX offset, it somehow throttled on POVRay even at base (3.3 GHz) clock speeds. The Intel XTU application showed it was a current limit that was tripping. I went to the BIOS to raise the limit and it was already set to the maximum of 1023 Amps. I raised the package power limits to 350W which did not change the result. If what users are running utilizes AVX instructions, I would suggest overclocking manually as for some reason, it does not hit a current limit even though it is set the same in the BIOS. 

Manual overclocking was also fairly easy. The difference between this board and the others we have tested are the ease of which users can find and set critical items. With the AORUS BIOS, everything has its own sub-section from the M.I.T section. For example, to change frequency (CPU multiplier, BCLK), it's done in the advanced frequency section and we are able to change high-level memory settings (XMP profile, multiplier), and voltages from the advanced voltage section. The voltage section has another set of subheadings for different voltage domains even. What this means for the user is having to navigate, either by keyboard or mouse, through multiple subsections to find and adjust the needed settings. The BIOS did work just fine, however it felt tedious trying to dial in the overclock on this new CPU compared to other BIOSes. 

The board did not run into any issues with either the DDR4-2666 or the DDR4-3200 sets of RAM we use for testing. Like the other X299 boards, it was 'set XMP and go'. We were able to overclock past the XMP settings of our 3200 sticks and reached DDR4-3600 speeds without any issue from the board.

The Windows-based App Center and EasyTune utility worked well for the voltage and CPU multiplier changes I used them for. It has extensive memory overclocking options as far as timings and sub-timings go, though only some will work through (as with any Windows-based Memory overclocking). It also includes 

We did not run into any thermal issues on the VRM on this board in stock or overclocked form. Through the EasyTune software (and BIOS) the VRM idled at 34C in a 22C ambient room while sitting at 1.12V and 4.5 GHz all cores. After running OCCT for 30 mins, the temperatures peaked at 65C. According to Coretemp, the CPU was drawing about 210W at that peak temperature (total system 315W+ according to the Kill-A-Watt).  

Overall, the Gaming 7 Pro is a capable overclocker like many of the boards which preceded it. Hopefully, the BIOS receives some refinement both in appearance, as well as ergonomics and option placement in its next iteration. 

Overclocking Methodology

Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with POV-Ray and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.

For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from the previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (90ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Overclocking Results

The AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro topped out at 4.7 GHz using the new, better overclocking CPU. This retail CPU (we used an ES before) was able to reach an additional 200 MHz higher due to the quality of its silicon. There was very little vdrop and vdroop with LLC set to auto. All boards we have tested were very stable in that regard.  At the top overclock of 4.7 GHz and 1.215V, the system pulled over 340W at the wall with the CPU itself claiming around 230W of that value.

 

Conclusion

The $400+ predicted price of the AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro gives it direct competitors by both price and function with boards like the MSI X299 XPower Gaming AC ($440), the ASUS ROG Rampage VI Apex ($430), and the ASRock Fatal1ty X299 Professional Gaming i9 XE ($423). 

The AORUS line of motherboards purports to be its premium gaming line and many of the boards do appear to be just that, including the Gaming 7 Pro. Unlike the ROG lineup which starts well over $300, the AORUS X299 line had a bit more range on the low end, and starts around $210 with the X299 AORUS Gaming. At that price point it loses the expansive RGB LEDs and a few features, but, its also priced a lot lower than a comparable board. Most of the X299 AORUS lineup applies RGB LEDs in a seemingly carefree fashion: there are lights on the shrouds, PCIe slots, and chipset. But the AORUS boards take it a step further and add strips between each of the DIMM slots. There are those who love the look and control over the lighting, and those that do not. If the features tickle your fancy but the lights are a turn-off, consider shutting them off. To me, it is a love/hate arrangement. Outside of that, it does have a large two-part heatsink to cool the 12-phase VRM - it even has a small fan hidden away under the back panel shroud to help with cooling. It was able to maintain temperatures well within specifications in our test environment - even while overclocking. 

Feature-wise, the board has a lot going for it. The 12-phase power delivery and heatsink arrangement handled the test system both stock and overclocked without so much as batting an eye, even at 4.7 GHz with the new CPU, and the internal fan was barely noticable on the testbed. The Gaming Pro 7 also keeps all three of the M.2 slots under heatsinks. While other boards do have similar features, not all implementations are the same. Either not all three are heatsinked or the heatsinks are thin and flimsy looking. If having a lot of high-speed USB ports are a priority, the Gaming 7 Pro is a good motherboard to look at without using an add-in card. The five USB 3.1 10 Gbps ports on the back panel is the only in X299. 

The App Center software was a good place to access all programs from GIGABTYE. The few I used including Easy Tune (for monitoring, fan control, overclocking), RGB Fusion, and the Gigabyte HW OC App, worked without issue in my limited testing time. Along those lines, performance while overclocking was not really able to be compared as this is the first use of the retail CPU. That said, this board was able to take that CPU to 4.7 GHz in our testing. The dual heatsinks managed to keep the VRM at 65C during extended OCCT testing which is one of the cooler temperatures we have seen and well within specifications. Overall it is a capable overclocker. 

Performance on the AORUS X299 Gaming 7 Pro was overall good with the vast majority of the results falling in the middle of the pack with the other boards. This tells us the board is using Intel's specifications and is boosting to 3.6 GHz on all cores. Where the board really shined was in the boot times, leading all motherboards by a small margin. Auto overclocking set all cores to 4 GHz, but also implemented a -3 AVX offset. So while non-AVX loads yielded improvements due to the 400 MHz clock speed increase, AVX loads only improved to the tune of 100 MHz. 

As is the case, the difference comes down to features and what a user wants and needs in a given budget. At an expected price of $400+, the ASRock Fatal1ty Professional Gaming i9 XE sits squarely in the crosshairs. Between the two, the difference really comes down to appearance, heatsinked M.2 ports, more USB 3.1 ports on the G7P, and 10GbE on the ASRock. Both use high-end audio, support 3-Way GPUs and do not include a U.2 port. There are other boards surrounding it with different feature sets as well, but for what is included on the board and looking right around it, users will have to really dig deep and see what features are wanted and needed at this price point. 

Other AnandTech X299 Motherboard Reviews:

Prices checked Jan 25th

• The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X Tested
• The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9-7900X, i7-7820X and i7-7800X Tested
• The Intel Kaby Lake-X Review: Core i7-7740X and i5-7640X Tested
• Intel Announces Basin Falls: The New High-End Desktop Platform and X299 Chipset
   
• ($400) The ASRock X299E-ITX/ac Review [link] 
• ($400) The GIGABYTE X299 Gaming 7 Pro Review (this review)
• ($390) The ASRock X299 Professional Gaming i9 Review [link] 
• ($370) The ASUS Strix X299-XE Gaming Review [link] 
• ($350) The MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon Review [link] 
• ($340) The ASUS X299 TUF Mark 1 Review [link] 
• ($290) The ASRock X299 Taichi Review [link]
• ($280) The MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic Review [link]
• ($260) The MSI X299 SLI Plus Review [link]
   
• ($500) The GIGABYTE X299 Gaming 9 Review (planned) 
• ($490) The ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe Review (testing)
• ($330) The EVGA X299 FTW-K Review (in editing)
• ($290) The EVGA X299 Micro Review (in editing)
• ($286) The MSI X299M Gaming Pro Carbon AC Review (testing)
• ($199) The ASRock X299 Extreme4 Review (testing)
• ($?) The EVGA X299 Dark (planned)