AMD + ITX + TB3? It's the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 Motherboard Review
by Gavin Bonshor on October 9, 2019 12:00 PM ESTCPU 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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DanaGoyette - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link
I'll bet nobody buys micro ATX partly because all the micro ATX boards are crippled in things such as audio codec (enjoy your ALC887), Ethernet (yay Realtek), or in Asrock's case, poor VRM efficiency.Nobody buys because there are no good boards, no good boards because nobody buys.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link
I remembre when there were tons of micro ATX chioces, the gigabyte snimer M.3, the asus boards, ece.Even intel only has two good micro ATX boards, both from asus. Nothing from gigabyte, nothing good from MSI or ASrock. At least the TUF micro has a good audio chip (Realtek ALC S1200A) and intel NIC.
Jasmij - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
Throughout the review I see much talk about Thunderbolt but benchmarks are missing.This board failed certification by Intel.
https://thunderbolttechnology.net/products?tid=15&...
Can we get some Thunderbolt compatablity and speed tests?
DCide - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
I would like to see tests too, but I don’t see how this motherboard “failed certification” simply by being absent from a list where the newest motherboard I could find was the 2018 Z390 Designare.jeremyshaw - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
Also, didn't Intel already open standard Thunderbolt? They may not be in charge of certification anymore.DCide - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
Yes, they did - right about the time the list appears to have stopped growing!jab701 - Thursday, October 10, 2019 - link
FYI, they are still in charge of certification.If you want to use the thunderbolt logo on your device you *have* to pass certification.
I read that even though USB 4 (or is it USB4) will integrate thunderbolt, if you wish to use the thunderbolt logo it will *still* have to pass intels certification process. This sounds a bit dodgey but if you think about it, I would rather be sure my graphics card enclosure is going to work properly.
Given The number of USB device out there which *apparently* conform to the USB standard but do not interoperate properly, I would say that USB certification might not be stringent enough.
(I say this as an Electronic Engineer who has found numerous issues getting kit to work together properly in systems I design and use as part of my job).
Cooe - Thursday, December 19, 2019 - link
This is so freaking false I don't even know where to begin. To legally put the official Thunderbolt logo & branding on ANY for sale product, it MUST pass Intel's certification process. This is a certified board, regardless of what you've read. In fact, it's the major price tag that comes with this certification process for all non-Intel hardware that has kept Thunderbolt off AMD (in an officially supported capacity) until this point (Intel waives the certification fee on products w/ Intel CPU's).This is made explicitly clear with the fact that unofficially Thunderbolt 3 works just fine (w/ the Titan Ridge PCIe card) on most all other AM4 as well as X399 boards (with the small exception of device hot swap support not working), but w/o said pricey certification this isn't an "officially" supported setup.
andychow - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
"a DisplayPort 1.4 input for users looking to drive multiple displays with resolutions of up to 4K from a discrete graphics card". How???The DP goes from your discrete graphic card into the motherboard. Then what?
jeremyshaw - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
It is for TB3.