The MSI MEG X570 Ace Motherboard Review: Ace in the Hole at $369
by Gavin Bonshor on July 18, 2019 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- MSI
- AM4
- Zen 2
- Ryzen 3000
- X570
- MEG
- X570 Ace
- 3700X
- Ryzen 3700X
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 put the memory settings at the CPU manufacturers suggested frequency, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
For X570 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1903 update as per our Ryzen 3000 CPU review.
Rendering - Blender 2.7b: 3D Creation Suite - link
A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.
Streaming and Archival Video Transcoding - Handbrake 1.1.0
A popular open source tool, Handbrake is the anything-to-anything video conversion software that a number of people use as a reference point. The danger is always on version numbers and optimization, for example the latest versions of the software can take advantage of AVX-512 and OpenCL to accelerate certain types of transcoding and algorithms. The version we use here is a pure CPU play, with common transcoding variations.
We have split Handbrake up into several tests, using a Logitech C920 1080p60 native webcam recording (essentially a streamer recording), and convert them into two types of streaming formats and one for archival. The output settings used are:
- 720p60 at 6000 kbps constant bit rate, fast setting, high profile
- 1080p60 at 3500 kbps constant bit rate, faster setting, main profile
- 1080p60 HEVC at 3500 kbps variable bit rate, fast setting, main profile
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing - 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 1-2 minutes on high-end platforms.
Compression – WinRAR 5.60b3: 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.
Synthetic – 7-Zip v1805: link
Out of our compression/decompression tool tests, 7-zip is the most requested and comes with a built-in benchmark. For our test suite, we’ve pulled the latest version of the software and we run the benchmark from the command line, reporting the compression, decompression, and a combined score.
It is noted in this benchmark that the latest multi-die processors have very bi-modal performance between compression and decompression, performing well in one and badly in the other. There are also discussions around how the Windows Scheduler is implementing every thread. As we get more results, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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.
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).
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rocky12345 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
Yes here in Canada the God like board goes for $950CAD to just over a grand depending on where you pick it up. Oh wait Newegg Canada has it on for a great sale price of $929.99CAD right now hurry everyone go out and get it while it is cheap....lolpavag - Saturday, July 20, 2019 - link
I want to buy an X570 mother, but I'm worried about the integrated fan.Can it be replaced if broken? I do not want to discard an expensive mother because of a fan failure.
Can you please attempt to replace the fan and report the results? Either a success or a fail will be very valuable, and something no other reviewer does. It would add a lot of value to Anantech.
Foeketijn - Sunday, July 21, 2019 - link
I read the reason for the expensive x570 motherboards everywhere, PCI 4, 16 core proc.The PCI 4 is hard to quantify. I can't imagen the BOM being that much more. A hundred euro/dollar buys you quite a bit more copper than fits in a motherboard.
And the 220W bulldosers where even more power hungry. And ran fine on 100 euro boards.
I think 2 things might explain things.
One AMD is presuring manufactors to push quality over price.
Or the manufactors saw AMD prices being lower than the equivalent Intel, and thought that price difference can be ours.
rocky12345 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
I heard the same thing this time around the board makers are putting on better VRM's to handle more load and the cost of the x570 is higher. They are also claiming because of PCIe 4.0 they have to do better pathways for better signalling. These are the claims anyway. I also think there is a huge greed factor involved as well driving the prices a bit higher. Oh and lets not forget that $1.50 chip set fan required to cool the x570 chip set.Rizen - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
What is the point of all these comments complaining about price? It's one of the higher end boards in their X570 stack. If you want cheaper X570 boards they have them, this one is $169. https://www.anandtech.com/show/14161/the-amd-x570-...waja - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
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I had this PBO problem... but faulty one is not ryzen 3000 but MSI Dragon Center.Dragon Center is messing with any PBO profile in the bios, stuck @3.6GHz on all core. Then PBO is only working if you activate it through RyzenMaster. Or else you uninstall Dragon Center, OneDC_SDK and forget about Mystic light! (found on reddit).
New version of Dragon Center today beta testers needed!
Daveteauk - Thursday, April 9, 2020 - link
ShadowLich - DC is a PoS. It hardly does anything it's supposed to, and each time there's Windoze update you have to get a new version from MSI or it falls over! These boards (MSI x570) are so buggy. BIOS will not update in DC. Live Update 6 is also a PoS - same issue with BIOS update there, it crashes the machine. As of April 2020, MSI are still asleep. DC and LU6 conflict with each other and the BIOS - it's a joke, on us. They know about these issues, but have done nothing! Tech support from MSI is really good, but their hands are tied by MSI 'engineers' being asleep. I'm on BIOS 1.70, and still everythings the same. And it's not just the ACE - I also have an x570 Gaming Edge Wi-Fi, which has all the same issues!rowellpark - Wednesday, July 24, 2019 - link
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