The ASUS ROG Maximus X Apex Review: X Marks the Spot, Literally
by Joe Shields on May 11, 2018 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Asus
- ROG
- Aquantia
- 5G
- Coffee Lake
- Z370
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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PhrogChief - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
LOL...Dragonstongue - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
IMO they really should have similar spec non LED/RGB bs motherboards for AMD as well as Intel because there are many (such as myself) that have ZERO need or want for RGB anything taking up the BOM for things that are far more useful.such as put the $ towards giving the best most stable VRM or ensuring the m.2 slots have the best cooling possible without having to resort to liquid (would not hurt them to move them away from right underneath the hottest parts in most computers such as graphics cards/cpu)
why can they not maybe figure out a way to place them right behind the sata/motherboard mains power where there tends to be a nice "hole" that is very rarely occupied with anything)
X shaped LMAO, I was expecting a significant X, but it barely cut the motherboard to give a very slight impression of this (and only if you look really closely)
I very much feel the same though, when you call everything X this or X that, Gaming this or Gaming that, Ultra this or Ultra that, the words lose all meaning, because "everyone is doing it"
ROG is a fine branding, and Hero or Formula or Maximus is also fine, they really do not need to add an even longer name on top of this to try to draw extra attention to it IMO ^.^
mapesdhs - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link
Years ago, the ASUS Sriker II Extreme turned heads, as did the Maximus IV Extreme, and definitely the Rampage IV Extreme. These days, the whole notion of such boards has been rather diluted. Fun stuff like PLX chips has largely gone, while the oc headroom of the latest mainstream Intel chip is garbage (why anyone cares about a 6% bump over the official max turbo is beyond me; at least with SB one could easily reach a 28% bump over the official max turbo, and without the need for Iceland airflow to keep it cool). Oc'ing back in the days of S775, X58, P55 and SB was fun, one could relaly push the hw and see some great gains (sooo many delighted 2500K users out there), but now it's just a giant yawn fest. The CPUs are doing a lot of the oc work automatically, and they're getting good at it.mapesdhs - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link
I meant to add, even outside the ROG line ASUS was doing funky things, eg. the P7P55 WS Supercomputer, x8/x8/x8/x8 on a P55 board! :D I hold most of the P55 3DMark records by plonking three 980s on that whacko board. The P9X79-E WS was similarly and usefully OTT, great for compute yet it has most of the same oc potential of the equiavent ROG board (R4E). Modern mbds have gone RGB bling mad because that's all they have left to tout.Dug - Wednesday, May 16, 2018 - link
I agree with the VRM and m.2 slots.I would really like to know why m.2 slots are in such a hot location.
I'd also like to know why Intel won't increase the lanes needed for more bandwidth to devices.
PhrogChief - Saturday, May 12, 2018 - link
COMING SOON: Asus Republic of Maximus GamerX Type R Ultra Rev 2.0 Extreme X599 MASTER EDITION w-Aura Link LightFlow by Strixm16 - Sunday, May 13, 2018 - link
Interesting, I don't know why this high density RAM was not more of a thing back in the DDR3 days, although I could understand the desire to Overclock and those 16GB DIMMs don't allow that in DDR3 (not to mention that most were also ECC applications).I hope the prices go down, because a 16GB DIMM although not a hard thing to find now, it is still very expensive.
Otherwise, this is an amazing board indeed.
Aikouka - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link
Seems a bit odd to go with a 5Gbps port on an expensive motherboard when ASRock is offering a 10Gbps port on their higher-end board (Z370 Professional Gaming i7). Heck, ASUS even releases stand-alone cards with the same chip that ASRock uses, which is the same company that makes the chip for this board.nimi - Tuesday, May 15, 2018 - link
ASUS be like:A: Guys, slapping on RGB just isn't cutting it anymore, we need something new to stand out.
B: *looks up from his fruit X phone* Notches are all the rage these days, what if we added a NOTCH to our board?
A: I think you're on to something! Hey, why not go one step further, let's do FOUR notches!!! I'll bet it'll sell 4 times as fast!
B: Yes! And add "X" to the name for good measure.
A: BRILLIANT