ASRock X79 Extreme9 Review - Price For Performance?
by Ian Cutress on January 24, 2012 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- X79
Test Setup
| Processor |
Intel Sandy Bridge-E i7-3960X 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 3.3 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards | ASRock X79 Extreme9 |
| Cooling | Intel All-In-One Liquid Cooler, made by Asetek |
| Power Supply | Silverstone 1000W 80 PLUS Silver |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsZ DDR3-1866 9-10-9-28 1.5 V 4x4 GB Kit |
| Memory Settings | XMP |
| Video Cards |
XFX HD 5850 1GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 11.8 NVIDIA Drivers 285.62 |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | Patriot 64GB SuperSonic USB 3.0 |
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the power supply, while in a dual GPU configuration. This method allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
The X79 Extreme9, on the whole, tends to use more power than other boards. This is perhaps due to the default settings of the CPU at 100%, and the 16+2 phase design.
CPU Temperatures
With most users’ running boards on purely default BIOS settings, we are running at default settings for the CPU temperature tests. This is, in our outward view, an indication of how well (or how adventurous) the vendor has their BIOS configured on automatic settings. With a certain number of vendors not making CPU voltage, turbo voltage or LLC options configurable to the end user, which would directly affect power consumption and CPU temperatures at various usage levels, we find the test appropriate for the majority of cases. This does conflict somewhat with some vendors' methodology of providing a list of 'suggested' settings for reviewers to use. But unless those settings being implemented automatically for the end user, all these settings do for us it attempt to skew the results, and thus provide an unbalanced 'out of the box' result list to the readers who will rely on those default settings to make a judgment. CPU Temperatures are not really indicative of quality or performance, even though one would postulate that worse parts may produce higher temperatures. However, if a manufacturer uses more conductive material in the power plane, this reduces resistance and increases the voltage at the CPU, causing a higher temperature but potentially better stability.
The X79 Extreme9 is middling in the pack on low loads for temperature, but the OCCT usage shows that it is cooler than the rest - the 100% CPU fan setting, and extended VRM heatsinks, help here.
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Hauk - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - link
I remember jumping to X58 when I saw that a reasonably priced cpu (i7 920) which would OC like crazy came available. Not so much with X79, still waiting for i7 3820, all parts on hand, including an ASRock Extreme 7 ($259). It's not such a bad platform when cheap mobo's, cpus, and DDR3 are available. What about it Intel?? Stupid move IMO not getting 3820 to market sooner. X79 could have garnered more steam than it has..landerf - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - link
For the record Creative's Core3D doesn't offload openal, in case anyone was expecting it too.BPB - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - link
Does this board support SRT? If so I would actually consider spending the money on it.Blibbax - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - link
"The X79 Extreme9 comes in around +50% more than those boards ($360 vs. ~$240), meaning I would expect 50% more when it came to the Extreme9."It never works like this. Is a Ferrari 5000% better than a Ford? What about 3960x vs. 3930k?
If you want maximum performance per price, there's no way you'd be looking at SB-E anyway.
purefun1965 - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - link
I feel its overpriced. I would like it more if it was $300.00Stas - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - link
ClrCMOS button is nice. That's about it.Stas - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - link
Also, no 24-phase power? O.oAlexIsAlex - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - link
I mentioned this in the last motherboard review, but as I didn't get an answer either way, I'll ask again just in case:What would be nice, in motherboard reviews, would be a measure of the cold boot (POST) time. This is something that different bioses can be differentiated on, and UFEI offers the potential for very fast boots if manufacturers take advantage of it properly.
Would it be possible to report, for comparison, the time between the power button being pressed and the installed bootloader starting? I was thinking it might be easiest to measure this by having no OS on the boot media and measuring the time to the "please insert boot media" message, but I'm sure you can think of other ways of doing it.
Another commenter also requested that this be done for both stock and overclocked settings, as he found boot times to be much slower with overclocked settings on his motherboard.
bji - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - link
I would absolutely love to see these figures also. It is a major annoyance to me that my ASUS motherboard takes a full 7 - 8 seconds to even show the POST screen, and a further 1 - 2 seconds after that to get to my bootloader. I would personally highly value a greatly reduced POST time and would like to have this information in motherboard reviews. Having these values measured, evaluated, and compared is the only way that motherboard and BIOS makers will have any incentive to improve.javier_machuk - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
I'm on the same boat! my asus z68 board takes longer to post than to load windows with a intel 510 ssd!It would be interesting to compare this values between various manufacturers.