- Joined
- Dec 10, 2022
- Messages
- 481 (0.78/day)
System Name | The Phantom in the Black Tower |
---|---|
Processor | AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D |
Motherboard | ASRock X570 Pro4 AM4 |
Cooling | AMD Wraith Prism, 5 x Cooler Master Sickleflow 120mm |
Memory | 64GB Team Vulcan DDR4-3600 CL18 (4×16GB) |
Video Card(s) | ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming OC 24GB |
Storage | WDS500G3X0E (OS), WDS100T2B0C, TM8FP6002T0C101 (x2) and ~40TB of total HDD space |
Display(s) | Haier 55E5500U 55" 2160p60Hz |
Case | Ultra U12-40670 Super Tower |
Audio Device(s) | Logitech Z200 |
Power Supply | EVGA 1000 G2 Supernova 1kW 80+Gold-Certified |
Mouse | Logitech MK320 |
Keyboard | Logitech MK320 |
VR HMD | None |
Software | Windows 10 Professional |
Benchmark Scores | Fire Strike Ultra: 19484 Time Spy Extreme: 11006 Port Royal: 16545 SuperPosition 4K Optimised: 23439 |
Agreed. This is especially true considering just how short a life that PCI-e4 had. I'd never seen a PCI-e standard come and go so fast in my life and my first video card was an 8-bit ATi EGA Wonder on a BioStar Baby-AT ISA motherboard.This is what most consumers, even so-called technology enthusiasts, fail to understand: the thing that makes the difference is the fact is that an SSD is a NAND device, not the interface said SSD communicates via. And NAND's advantage is latency, not bandwidth, so coupling it to higher-bandwidth interfaces... really doesn't make that much of a difference, except in scenarios that are bandwidth-limited... which is very few, mostly non-game ones.
The only reason that I can think of as to why we haven't seen it yet is that the performance delta is possibly not large enough to be worthwhile.The reason for this of course is that a game isn't comprised of a single huge resource that needs to be loaded (which would be bandwidth-intensive), but of very many small ones - so small and so numerous that they end up saturating the SSD controller's queue depth rather than its bandwidth. DirectStorage was supposed to help with this by bundling those resources together into one big file that your GPU knows how to split out into the smaller ones it needs, thus moving the performance requirement to bandwidth over latency... but it's still AWOL on PCs as far as I can see.
This is where you lost me. I don't know to whom you refer because "traditionally", ASRock has always been compared to ASUS, Gigabyte and MSi and that has been true for at least 16 years. I've been building PCs since 1988 and your post is the first time that I've ever seen or heard someone say that ASRock is a "low-tier" brand. As a matter of fact, the ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA is one of the most innovative motherboards that I've ever seen, if not the most innovative (AGP or PCI-Express and DDR or DDR2 support). It lasted a VERY long time because I was able to upgrade my video card and RAM separately. Both of my AM4 motherboards have been ASRock with my X370 Killer SLI and my X570 Pro4, both of which have been absolutely rock-solid, just like the old 4CoreDual-VSTA.ASRock has traditionally been seen as few tiers lower than the other names you mentioned,
Now that I think about it, I've never heard of there being more than two tiers of motherboard brands, let alone several tiers that would be required for ASRock to be "a few tiers lower" than ASUS, Gigabyte and MSi. In my experience, the theoretical "brand-tiers" of motherboards have always looked like this:
Tier 1 - ASRock, ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSi, SuperMicro and XFX
Tier 2 - Biostar, ECS/Elitegroup, Foxconn, Jetway and SOYO
Tier 1 manufacturers don't just make motherboards for standard desktop and laptop products. They also make boards for HEDT and severs. ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSi and SuperMicro all make Threadripper and EPYC boards. AMD wouldn't trust such products to just anyone so again, I don't see how ASRock is "a few tiers lower' than ASUS, Gigabyte or MSi.
Perhaps you could explain what you mean because I have no idea to what you refer.
That doesn't seem to hold water either, at least not when compared to Gigabyte because the most expensive X670 board from Gigabyte is the AORUS X670E Master which matches the price of ASRock's most expensive X670 board, the X670E Taichi with both costing US$500 at Newegg. That would indicate that their pricing is in line with Gigabyte at the high-end.with its products priced accordingly.
Now, sure, ASUS and MSi do have halo motherboards with the Crosshair and Godlike respectively which I suppose could make them as brands, a higher tier than ASRock and Gigabyte but again, that makes ASRock equal to Gigabyte, not "a few tiers" below it. I personally don't see MSi as a great name because I had an MSi flagship board years ago, a very expensive K9A2 Platinum and it failed after about 1½ years of normal use (no overclocking and no more than two video cards in its four slots). To date, it's the only board that has EVER failed on me and ironically, the cheap ECS/Elitegroup board with which I replaced it STILL WORKS. Therefore, I consider MSi to be crap because if an "off-brand" ECS/Elitegroup motherboard has lasted for 15 years while the flagship K9A2 Platinum lasted for less than 6 months past its warranty period, I find it impossible to consider MSi as a brand that I want to buy, ever. When I purchase a flagship-grade motherboard, I expect it to be durable and long-lasting. The MSi K9A2 Platinum was neither while every other motherboard that I've ever owned has been flawless.
Thus, I must agree to disagree as the evidence that I could find backs my experience that even if there are two "tiers" of big-name motherboards (something I don't agree with in the first place), then ASRock would be at least at the same level as Gigabyte. If you want to stipulate that the Crosshair and Godlike put ASUS and MSi, respectively, into a higher tier with SuperMicro, then sure, that's as good a reason as any I suppose. However, I would take an ASRock over an MSi or ASUS any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Gigabyte might be another story because my 990FX motherboard is a Gigabyte and it has been phenomenal.
At the end of the day, I just want my motherboard to function as intended and to outlast the CPU that sits on it. After all, the impact that motherboards make on PC performance is so slight that I would refer to said impact as essentially abstract.