The ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe Motherboard Review: Onboard OLED and WiGig
by Joe Shields on February 16, 2018 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- X299
- Basin Falls
- Skylake-X
- Kaby Lake-X
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.
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11 Comments
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PeachNCream - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
I think it's pretty safe to say that motherboards are too expensive and the things offered in exchange for the price like a tiny status screen and RGB LED strips on heatsinks don't really justify the cost.Destoya - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
The HEDT platform motherboards have always suffered from being overpriced, but I do agree that the feature creep is not keeping up with the MSRP increases. Just a generation ago the X99 Deluxe had a MSRP of $400 with the X99-A at $275, both usually selling for around $20-30 less than that even close to release time. The addition of thunderbolt, U.2, and USB 3.1 on this board are notable but not really worth $100+, especially considering other features such as the overall number of Sata/USB ports has actually decreased over the past 3.5 years.Maleorderbride - Saturday, February 17, 2018 - link
I generally agree (as an owner of an X99 Deluxe II), but at least one can sell all of the doodads, bells, and whistles on eBay leaving you with just a solid board.Selling the TB3 card and a bunch of completely unnecessary cables left me with ~$90. Not ideal, but clearly someone wants a "CPU Installer Tool" and the rest of the crap.
Araemo - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link
Do those add-ins even work?I bought the ThunerboltEX3 for a board it didn't come bundled with (but listed compatibility with it as a selling point), and it took me a few hours of trying different bios settings and driver version combinations to get it to even install properly within Windows, and still came up against a wall where it broke hibernate and hybrid sleep support in Windows.
For something I bought as a 'future proofing' add-on to my build, I was very unhappy with it, and after trying to correct it with ASUS support for over a month, I gave up and returned it to Amazon while I still could.
CheapSushi - Friday, February 16, 2018 - link
The PCBs are better in general with higher quality VRMs, MOSFETs, SMDs, Caps, etc. I see zero issue to complain about this when there's so many other options already. Don't buy it if you don't want it. Were you even in the market for the highest end enthusiast boards? Probably not anyway.sonicmerlin - Saturday, February 17, 2018 - link
Wow it has WiGig. What would that even be used for? Can you test the performance?3DoubleD - Saturday, February 17, 2018 - link
I found it strange that it was in the title, but they hardly mentioned it in the review.69369369 - Sunday, February 18, 2018 - link
Streaming 4K porn.pyrrh0 - Thursday, February 22, 2018 - link
WiGig (802.11ad) wireless access points already exist in the consumer space; Netgear's Nighthawk X10 is one. Dell and other PC manufacturers have wireless docks using the same technology. Multi-Gbps actual throughput, but limited to about 30 ft line-of-sight.notR1CH - Monday, February 19, 2018 - link
I really wish 10 GbE would become more standard on high end boards.