The MSI MEG X570 Ace Motherboard Review: Ace in the Hole at $369
by Gavin Bonshor on July 18, 2019 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- MSI
- AM4
- Zen 2
- Ryzen 3000
- X570
- MEG
- X570 Ace
- 3700X
- Ryzen 3700X
CPU 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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rocky12345 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
If you were replying to me I don't think I ever said what I had hooked up to the Sata ports. SO here goes I have a Samsung 860 Pro 512GB as my C drive and 3 4TB WD blacks hooked to the system as just pure storage and game drives. When I upgrade to a new platform I probably will go with a 1TB NMVe drive as my C drive and pick up 3 6TB WD blacks for storage.I may also installed a second cheaper 1TB NMVe drive in the second M.2 slot so can install most played games on that drive.
TheUnhandledException - Saturday, July 20, 2019 - link
How about the horrible lack of punch card reader support. 4 SATA is fine these days. The future is m.2 (or ideally also u.2 but that seems server only). I am glad that OEMs aren't wasting PCIe lanes putting in 6 or 8 or 10 SATA ports. If you really need 8 SATA ports then get an expansion card and connect all your drives to that.rocky12345 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
4 ports for most are fine even my own needs only need up to 4 ports since on my current system I have 1 Sata SSD and 3 Sata hard drives installed and got rid of the Blu-Ray drive a long time ago.I think the point being made was for this amount of money for the board it seems like they cut some of the features. I think I have seen other recent Ryzen boards with 6 sata ports maybe even 8 ports and cost less also. Right now I require up to 4 ports on my current system and have 5 ports free.
In my next build I will only need 3 ports because of switching to NMVe m.2 SSD drive but I do plan on getting 3 hard drives for large storage needs because SSD drives can not match the price to storage size yet of a regular hard drive. My plan just like last time I got my drives is to get the fastest possible drives on the market in the consumer segment which is the WD Black drives. I probably will get 6TB drives this time around and would like to get the 8TB drives but they seem to be hard to find right now so 6TB will have to do I will just get 3 of them to fulfill my storage needs.
Tomyknee - Saturday, August 31, 2019 - link
Thank you. Why does no one see this? This is the first new PCIe upgrade in a decade and people are fretting about 6gb SATA? Stay with a stinking X399 board if you are going to continue to use SATAAzurael - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
Are you ever planning to do native EFI post time? I'm not sure how relevant BIOS-emulation boot is any more.I certainly haven't had CSM enabled for about 5 years - just leaving it on, even if you're booting in EFI mode, easily doubles POST time on most of the Gigabyte boards I've used in that period - and that's without enabling AMI Fast/Ultra Fast boot mode where it doesn't bring up unnecessary things like AHCI and XHCI controllers which aren't hosting a boot device and will have to be initialised by the OS anyway.
My current machine starts booting Windows about 2 seconds after I press the power button (which is much faster than any of the OEM machines I've observed booting in EFI mode and leads me to suspect that the relative differences between boards will be totally different in EFI mode.)
marcle - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
How much noise does the chipset fan make? Can I use the X570 chipset in an audio production environment that requires a (virtually) silent computer?Right now I've got an i7-4771 with 84w TDP that's inaudible in an insulated case, and stays under 60C (usually well under) even at load.
How would the X570 fare in that situation?
DillholeMcRib - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
Is there any reason why the vendors have gone from reasonably priced X470 boards to overbuilt Intel-level price gougers on X570?zer0hour - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
Ridiculously priced motherboard.Qasar - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
nope.. that would be MSI's godlike x570 board..zer0hour - Saturday, July 20, 2019 - link
That one is even more ridiculous.