CPU Benchmarks

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, memory subtimings 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.

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 wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.

3D Particle Movement: Single Threaded

3D Particle Movement: MultiThreaded

Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: 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 5.01, 2867 files, 1.52 GB

Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link

Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated for 2014 to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.9

Video Conversion – Handbrake v0.9.9: link

Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. The principle today is still the same, primarily as an output for H.264 + AAC/MP3 audio within an MKV container. In our test we use the same videos as in the Xilisoft test, and results are given in frames per second.

HandBrake v0.9.9 LQ Film

HandBrake v0.9.9 2x4K

Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link

The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, 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 3.7 Beta RC4

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.

7-zip Benchmark

Sunspider 1.0.2

Sunspider 1.0.2

Kraken 1.1

Kraken 1.1

GIGABYTE AM1M-S2H In The Box, System Benchmarks Gaming Benchmarks
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  • DanNeely - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Is this board full length mATX? It doesn't look like there's quite enough room below the 3rd PCIe slot to fit the 4th and still have room for the edge of board headers.
  • DanNeely - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    Confirmed. Gigabyte lists it as 22x17cm. A full height mATX board would be 24.6cm tall.
  • HigherState - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    I think it would be very interesting to see what using a R7 260X with Mantle enabled would do for gaming. I know thats not exactly what this platform is all about, but this is kinda what Mantle is suited for, I think. From what I could tell from a quick google search, it helps. Would like to see some up-to-date numbers, not ones from 4 months ago where Mantle and Kabini drivers were still being fleshed out.
  • hojnikb - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    Or you could just get the cheapest 1150 mobo and celeron for a little bit more. it will be faster and much much more upgrade friendly.
  • zodiacfml - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    too bulky and complex for any signage use. this is plain cheap mobo for emerging markets or business such as internet shops in some countries.
  • hojnikb - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    damn, those green caps really spoil the looks of this thig.
  • Per Hansson - Saturday, August 23, 2014 - link

    Those are Japanese Sanyo capacitors (now Suncon)
    Please stop complaining about a $35 board using high quality Japanese caps!
  • jardows2 - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    What does $35 get me on this board? Too much in my opinion. I can see this platform working well as a media player +, in a very small (think thin mITX) platform, but all the motherboard offerings I have seen are too bulky. What I want is:

    2x USB 2.0 rear connectors for KB and mouse
    2x USB 3.0 rear connectors for external hard drive
    HDMI video/audio (don't need standard audio jacks for this)
    Gigabit Ethernet.
    SO-DIMM slots for RAM
    mSATA slot
    1 SATA connector for possible optical drive
    1 mini-PCIE for wireless.

    Unfortunately, I am in no position to purchase 10,000+ of these to have an OEM make such a board for me. Hopefully there are enough people requesting this type of board for someone to make it a reality.
  • Arnulf - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    WTF happened to the DE-15 connector, is blue too expensive compared to black or did we somehow land in 1993 ?
  • yannigr2 - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    @Anandtech Your spam filter is NOT working properly. And there is NO way to get help.
    My apologies for this post that is a result after 1+ month trying to find a way to fix my account other than just making a new one.

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