Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11882/the-gigabyte-aorus-ax370gaming-5-motherboard-review



Today we are having a look at a LED-laden, gaming-focused, ATX motherboard from GIGABYTE: the Aorus AX370-Gaming 5. If a user wants LEDs for Ryzen at under $200, here is one of the primary contenders. Being part of GIGABYTE's gaming product line means we get SLI support, and GIGABYTE is using a gaming-focused network controller (one of two) and some overclocking options for the processor. The interesting part of this board, however, is the use of dual audio codecs: one for the rear panel and one for the front panel. To physically do this requires a couple of compromises, so we have put the board through its paces to see if it is worth buying.

Other AnandTech Reviews for AMD’s Ryzen CPUs and X370/B350

The AMD Ryzen 3 1300X and Ryzen 3 1200 CPU Review: Zen on a Budget
The AMD Ryzen 5 1600X vs Core i5 Review: All Ryzen 5 CPUs Tested
The AMD Zen and Ryzen 7 Review: A Deep Dive on 1800X, 1700X and 1700

To read specifically about the X370/B350 chip/platform and the specifications therein, our deep dive into what it is can be found at this link.

Planned Reviews

  • $260 - ASRock X370 Professional Gaming
  • $230 - ASRock X370 Taichi
  • $175 - GIGABYTE AX370-Gaming 5 [this review]
  • $120 - ASRock B350 Gaming K4
  • $110 - Biostar X370GTN [review]
  • $98 - MSI B350 Tomahawk

The GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 Overview

The GIGABYTE AX370-Gaming 5 shows that not every motherboard has to conform to the regular gaming themed combination of black PCB with red or silver aluminium heatsinks. With the Gaming 5, it has a wave of black and white contrasting heatsinks featured across the board. GIGABYTE has opted to implement a fairly standard X370 PCIe layout consisting of two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots powered by the CPU, which feature support for dual graphics card configurations on either SLI or CrossFire and have additional rigidity support. This is in addition to a single full-length slot present at the bottom which operates at PCIe 2.0 x4 also with rigidity support, and three PCIe 2.0 x1 slots.

It gets a little interesting when we start discussing the controllers. Powering the onboard audio are a pair of Realtek ALC1220 codecs, with one dedicated for the back panel and one specifically for the front. Very few boards (if ever?) have had this arrangement, making the Gaming 5 special in that regard. The audio comes bundled with SoundBlaster’s X-Fi MB5 software utility. For networking, the primary port is derived from the gaming-focused Killer E2500 Gigabit controller, and a second from an Intel I211-AT controller.

Featured is a 10-phase power design, which GIGABYTE aims for solid and consistent power delivery, and claims it is useful for overclocking. It is worth noting that the VRM is split into a 4+2 design with the phases dedicated to the SoC using a doubler to give an 8+2 phase design overall.

Storage wise, the Gaming 5 has eight SATA 6Gbs ports which are accompanied by two SATA Express ports. PCIe storage comes via a single U.2 port, which shares bandwidth with a single M.2-2280 slot found between the first two full-length PCIe slots.

Performance on the Gaming 5 essentially matches what we see on the other X370 boards. Despite the dual audio codecs, this means that each codec only has half of the space, so our audio results show that it is one of the weaker ALC1220 solutions (although better than the ALC892 units we have tested). Power consumption at idle was within a couple of watts of our other boards despite the LEDs, and at load the system actually drew 15W less than our other tests, to which we're still looking into an explanation. Overclocking, as explained below, was relatively easy.

The Gaming 5 sits near the top of the pile of GIGABYTE's current X370 offerings, with the only model above it being the AX370-Gaming K7. It is also worth noting that GIGABYTE's X370 range stops just short of $200 even with their top AX370-Gaming K7 model; with the very similar AX370-Gaming 5 which this review is actually on coming in at $184 (at the time of review).

Overclocking

Most, if not all, mid-range motherboards are very capable of overclocking the processor, and most include a one-click OC button (either physical or in the BIOS) which gives the task to the motherboard based on how far it believes it can be done safely. The only caveat of this is that virtually every motherboard I have used this with is very cautious about not giving enough voltage, so over-volts the CPU. This gives the overclock more chance to remain stable, but plays havoc for little gains at the price of extra energy lost as heat; thermal sensors can start to kick in even if the auto-option is safe. With the Gaming 5, both automatic overclocking and a manual overclocking is available.

Methodology

Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with POV-Ray and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.

For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Overclocking Results

Referencing back to the Biostar X370GTN review, our Ryzen 7 1700 CPU does have a limitation between 3.9GHz and 4.0GHz; at least on the boards we have tested thus far. This is down to silicon lottery and a combination of a sharp ramp of voltage to temperature when moving up each different step; therefore, cutting out/throttling due to thermal limitations when pushed too far on ambient cooling.

POV-Ray @ 3.9GHz

Power OCCT (w/GTX 980) - Overclocking

The Ryzen 7 1700 processor we are using has a 3.0 GHz base core clock speed and a 3.7 GHz turbo, and is rated at 65W. When overclocked to 3.9 GHz with 1.375v, the overall power consumption taken at the wall was pushing just under 187W at peak.



GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 Board Features

The Gaming 5 has a lot about it if we factor in the high volume of connections and inputs on a sub $200 offering. Physically Gaming 5 has support for both 2-way SLI and 3-way CrossFire multi-graphics configurations, although theoretically there is support for up to 4-way SLI and 4-way CrossFire with GPUs featuring two GPU cores on a single PCB. GIGABYTE is known for emphasizing its onboard audio solutions on their range of upper-end boards, but the AX370-Gaming 5 features dual Realtek ALC1220 codecs with the second designed specifically for the front panel audio.

GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 ATX Motherboard
Warranty Period 3 Years
Product Page Link
Price $174
Size ATX
CPU Interface AM4
Chipset AMD X370
Memory Slots (DDR4) Four DDR4
Supporting 64GB
Dual Channel
Up to 3200 MHz
Video Outputs HDMI 1.4
Network Connectivity Killer E2500 & Intel I211-AT
Onboard Audio Realtek ALC1220
PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) 2 x PCIe 3.0 (x16, x8/x8)
PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH) 1 x PCIe 2.0 (x4)
3 x PCIe (x1)
Onboard SATA Eight, RAID 0/1/10
Onboard M.2 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4, on Front
USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) 1 x Type-C
3 x Type-A
USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) 2 x Rear Panel
4 x Header
USB 2.0 4 × Header
Power Connectors 1 x 24-pin ATX
1 x 8-pin CPU
Fan Headers 1 x CPU (4-pin)
4 x System (4-pin)
2 x System/Pump (4-pin)
IO Panel 6 x USB 3.1 (USB 3.1 Gen 1)
3 x USB 3.1 (USB 3.1 Gen 2)
1 x USB 3.1 Type-C
2 x Network RJ-45
1 x HDMI 1.4
1 x Combo PS/2
5 x 3.5 mm Audio Jacks
1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port

Visual Inspection

The Gaming 5 has a wave of customisable RGB LED zones across multiple areas. Going from left to right, there is are subtly placed LEDs in the plastic audio component cover, and next to this are a couple of single LEDs placed at either side of the chokes in the VRM area. In the center, and under each of the two PCIe x16 3.0 slots, we get three LEDs forming a strip directly under the slots. On the right-hand side, there is an array of lighting in between the memory slots, and an LED bar on the right using a plastic pattern that can be replaced.

The top right-hand corner of the board features (what I like to call) 'a basic overclockers toolkit', and consists of a power button, a one-click OC button and small reset CMOS and system reset buttons. There also are five 4-pin PWM headers (including CPU) on the board, with two high-powered fan headers for users with water cooling pumps. The audio area has the pair of Realtek ALC1220 codecs, for both rear and front panel audio, which uses gold Japanese Nichon audio capacitors. Nippon Chemi-Con 10k solid capacitors are used elsewhere on the board and are black in colour.

Aside from the single and centrally located PCIe x4 NVMe M.2 storage slot, the rest of the storage options can be found on the lower right-hand side of the board. There are eight SATA 6Gb/s ports as well as two SATA Express ports. To the right is a single U.2 port as well.

With the power delivery, GIGABYTE is using a 10-phase digital power design. The VRM is controlled by am International Rectifier IR35201 digital PWM controller, running in 4+2 mode, with an IR3599 doubler bringing the count to 8+2. Supplementing the VRM controller, the board utilizes the International Rectifier IR3553M 40A MOSFETs and GIGABYTE's own designed ferrite core chokes.

One of the more premium features on the Gaming 5 is having a dual BIOS system. The BIOS in use can be selected via a switch on the board. At the bottom of the board just located below the bottom PCIe x16 slot are two switches which allow the user to change the configuration of the BIOS implementation: when switched into single mode, each of the two BIOS chips can run different BIOS versions (which is handy for overclockers who use different BIOS versions depending on the CPU model). When selecting the dual BIOS mode, they run in a mirror configuration; it reflects the image across both of the BIOS chips for redundancy purposes.

On the rear panel, there is single USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port and single USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port which are supported via the ASMedia ASM1143 USB controller. Also present is an additional two USB 3.1 Gen 2 type-A ports as well as six USB 3.0 ports and 3.5mm audio jacks for the onboard audio with S/PDIF output. A lot less emphasis has been placed on the onboard graphics as a there is only a single HDMI 1.4 output, with GIGABYTE showing its intent to market this board primarily to those planning on to use discrete graphics. There are two physical network ports, using the Rivet Networks Killer E2500 chip and the Intel I211-AT controller. Also present is a combination PS/2 port.



BIOS

GIGABYTE has a relatively basic but user friendly BIOS which features a black theme with red trim and white text. Even though it doesn’t quite have the futuristic look of other BIOS implementations, it still provides an easy to look at interface.

The initial entry screen brings a space-wasting set of menus that allow for access to all of the different settings, options and customizable features on this board. Overclocking options start from this menu, with the ability to enter frequency and voltage settings, as well as load line calibration. This board does not feature an external clock generator, so no alterations can be made to the base clock on this particular board. This board also supports XMP memory profiles.

With a basic initial BIOS, the Gaming 5 motherboard doesn’t feature separate advanced or basic modes. On the right-hand side, however, there is a panel that when clicked slides out and displays information such as CPU frequency and temperature, memory speeds and voltage, as well as the core voltage and the voltage on the +12v CPU power input.

Overall the BIOS does its job and it does it without much pizazz, but it worked during our testing.

Software

Like MSI and ASUS, GIGABYTE is known for plying end users with various amounts of flashy, albeit useful, software. With the board focusing on audio, the AX370-Gaming 5 uses the Sound Blaster X-Fi 5 audio software utility. With the inclusion of the gamer-focused Killer E2500 networking chip, the package also bundles the latest iteration of the Killer Control Center application, which uses a new interface that is easier to use than the Windows 8 mess. Also, rather useful is the GIGABYTE App Center which allows a quicker route to all of the installed GIGABYTE apps.

The GIGABYTE App Center might have little function in itself, but it offers an easy pathway to other GIGABYTE related applications, as well as access to Windows related settings and includes Windows update, Windows Firewall and power options. The App Center also allows for easy navigation to a host of installed third-party apps as well including Google Chrome.

Completely designed for audio only, the Sound Blaster X-Fi 5 software offers a range of different customizable options and pre-sets for different types of audio from music (the default profile) to real-time strategy games and driving simulators.

The Killer Control Center allows users to set speed limits on their network, as well as limiting certain applications and programs in terms of priority, giving higher priority to elements such as VOIP over downloads. This is useful for multiple different data streams coming from one device. The interface is now relatively simple to navigate and it will give you instant access to your network configurations as IP address, MAC address and your current gateway are all visible. Users can configure six different levels of priority per application, with the default for all apps being 'Level 4'.



Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Test Setup
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 1700, 65W, $300,
8 Cores, 16 Threads, 3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo)
Motherboard Gigabyte Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 (BIOS F9a)
Cooling Thermaltake Floe Riing RGB 360
Power Supply Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W Gold PSU
Memory 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400
Video Card ASUS GTX 980 STRIX (1178/1279 Boost)
Hard Drive Crucial MX300 1TB
Case Open Test Bed
Operating System Windows 10 Pro

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, overriding memory sub-timings 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.

Many thanks to...

Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs. At the time of release, the STRIX brand from ASUS was aimed at silent running, or to use the marketing term: '0dB Silent Gaming'. This enables the card to disable the fans when the GPU is dealing with low loads well within temperature specifications. These cards equip the GTX 980 silicon with ASUS' Direct CU II cooler and 10-phase digital VRMs, aimed at high-efficiency conversion. Along with the card, ASUS bundles GPU Tweak software for overclocking and streaming assistance.

The GTX 980 uses NVIDIA's GM204 silicon die, built upon their Maxwell architecture. This die is 5.2 billion transistors for a die size of 298 mm2, built on TMSC's 28nm process. A GTX 980 uses the full GM204 core, with 2048 CUDA Cores and 64 ROPs with a 256-bit memory bus to GDDR5. The official power rating for the GTX 980 is 165W.

The ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB (or the full name of STRIX-GTX980-DC2OC-4GD5) runs a reasonable overclock over a reference GTX 980 card, with frequencies in the range of 1178-1279 MHz. The memory runs at stock, in this case 7010 MHz. Video outputs include three DisplayPort connectors, one HDMI 2.0 connector and a DVI-I.

Further Reading: AnandTech's NVIDIA GTX 980 Review

Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200/MX300 SSDs. Crucial stepped up to the plate as our benchmark list grows larger with newer benchmarks and titles, and the 1TB units are strong performers. The MX200s are based on Marvell's 88SS9189 controller and using Micron's 16nm 128Gbit MLC flash, these are 7mm high, 2.5-inch drives rated for 100K random read IOPs and 555/500 MB/s sequential read and write speeds. The 1TB models we are using here support TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (eDrive) encryption and have a 320TB rated endurance with a three-year warranty.

Further Reading: AnandTech's Crucial MX200 (250 GB, 500 GB & 1TB) Review

Thank you to Corsair for providing us with Vengeance LPX DDR4 Memory

Corsair kindly sent a set of their Vengeance LPX low profile, high-performance memory. The heatsink is made of pure aluminum to help remove heat from the sticks and has an eight-layer PCB. The heatsink is a low profile design to help fit in spaces where there may not be room for a tall heat spreader; think a SFF case or using a large heatsink.

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 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 multithreaded 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 the 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 motherboards 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 distinctly audible pauses, pops or clicks.
 


System Performance

Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested.

Power Consumption

Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single ASUS GTX 980 GPU configuration with a wall meter connected to the Thermaltake 1200W power supply. This power supply has ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading 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.

While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.

Power Long Idle (w/GTX 980)Power OS Idle (w/GTX 980)Power OCCT (w/GTX 980)

The idle power consumption numbers for the Gaming 5 were slightly higher than most of the boards, likely due to the use of dual network controllers and the additional USB 3.1 controller, not to mention all the LED lighting. That being said, under load, it used 15W less power than the other full-sized motherboards. We are still trying to narrow down exactly what is the cause, in case something isn't firing up properly. Nonetheless, nothing was untoward in our benchmarking.

Non-UEFI POST Time

Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we look at the POST Boot Time using a stopwatch. This is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.)

Non UEFI POST Time

Most of the POST times on X370 seem to be in the same ball-park, differing by a second or two.

Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5

Rightmark:AA indicates how well the sound system is built and isolated from electrical interference (either internally or externally). For this test we connect the Line Out to the Line In using a short six inch 3.5mm to 3.5mm high-quality jack, turn the OS speaker volume to 100%, and run the Rightmark default test suite at 192 kHz, 24-bit. The OS is tuned to 192 kHz/24-bit input and output, and the Line-In volume is adjusted until we have the best RMAA value in the mini-pretest. We look specifically at the Dynamic Range of the audio codec used on the rear panel of the board.

Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5: Dynamic Range

One of the downsides of using dual audio codecs is that the space that is normally dedicated for one now has to be split between two. The ALC1220 easily beats the ALC892 solutions, however.

DPC Latency

Deferred Procedure Call latency is a way in which Windows handles interrupt servicing. In order to wait for a processor to acknowledge the request, the system will queue all interrupt requests by priority. Critical interrupts will be handled as soon as possible, whereas lesser priority requests such as audio will be further down the line. If the audio device requires data, it will have to wait until the request is processed before the buffer is filled.

If the device drivers of higher priority components in a system are poorly implemented, this can cause delays in request scheduling and process time. This can lead to an empty audio buffer and characteristic audible pauses, pops and clicks. The DPC latency checker measures how much time is taken processing DPCs from driver invocation. The lower the value will result in better audio transfer at smaller buffer sizes. Results are measured in microseconds.

Deferred Procedure Call Latency

All of our X370 boards get under a nice 150 microseconds, although the ASRock boards seem to do well here. The Gaming 5 doesn't match them but is the next one behind.



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.

Video Conversion – Handbrake v1.0.2: link

Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. For HandBrake, we take two videos and convert them to x264 format in an MP4 container: a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short. We also take the third video and transcode it to HEVC. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.

Handbrake v0.9.9 H.264: LQ

Handbrake v0.9.9 H.264: HQ

Handbrake v0.9.9 H.264: 4K60

Compression – WinRAR 5.4: link

Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2017. 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 5.0.1 Compression Test

Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test v2.1: 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. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here. We are using the latest version of 3DPM, which has a significant number of tweaks over the original version to avoid issues with cache management and speeding up some of the algorithms.

3DPM: Movement Algorithm Tester (Multi-threaded)

Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1b4: 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 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.

POV-Ray 3.7 Render Benchmark (Multi-Threaded)

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 9.2 Compress/Decompress Benchmark

 



Gaming Performance

Ashes of the Singularity

Seen as the holy child of DirectX12, Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS, or just Ashes) has been the first title to actively go explore as many of DirectX12s features as it possibly can. Stardock, the developer behind the Nitrous engine which powers the game, has ensured that the real-time strategy title takes advantage of multiple cores and multiple graphics cards, in as many configurations as possible.

Ashes of The Singularity on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB

Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.

One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.

Rise of The Tomb Raider on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB

Thief

Thief has been a long-standing title in PC gamers hearts since the introduction of the very first iteration which was released back in 1998 (Thief: The Dark Project). Thief as it is simply known rebooted the long-standing series and renowned publisher Square Enix took over the task from where Eidos Interactive left off back in 2004. The game itself utilises the fluid Unreal Engine 3 engine and is known for optimised and improved destructible environments, large crowd simulation and soft body dynamics.

Thief on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB

Total War: WARHAMMER

Not only is the Total War franchise one of the most popular real-time tactical strategy titles of all time, but Sega delve into multiple worlds such as the Roman Empire, Napoleonic era and even Attila the Hun, but more recently they nosedived into the world of Games Workshop via the WARHAMMER series. Developers Creative Assembly have used their latest RTS battle title with the much talked about DirectX 12 API so that this title can benefit from all the associated features that comes with it. The game itself is very CPU intensive and is capable of pushing any top end system to their limits.

Total War: WARHAMMER on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB



GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 Conclusion

The GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 is primarily designed for gamers that want premium features, but don’t want to break the bank. Priced around $175 at Amazon, it sits at a very competitive pricing point as far as X370 boards go. With a 10-phase power design, SLI and CrossFireX multi-GPU support, this white and black themed RGB laden ATX motherboard offers a nice board for users who want to make the most of the dedicated front panel headphone codec, thanks to the inclusion of a second Realtek ALC1220 codec.

The AX370-Gaming 5 has eight SATA 6Gb/s ports, a single U.2 port and a single centrally located PCIe x4 M.2 slot which supports NVMe and SATA drives up to a maximum of 110mm in length. RAID arrays including RAID 0, 1, and 10 are all supported by the Gaming 5 with all of the eight SATA 6Gb/s ports having the ability to be used. It is worth mentioning that when using the U.2 port, it automatically disables the M.2 slot.

Performance is relative and no abnormalities were found when testing, although I would personally expect a more fluid looking BIOS - nonetheless it is still fully functional and will do the job. Although it seems like GIGABYTE has focused all of the research and design budget on looks and features, users planning on using Bristol Ridge APUs on this board can still make do with a single HDMI 1.4 port. There are plenty of USB ports available including six USB 3.1 Type A ports, as well as USB 3.1 10Gb/s Type-A and Type-C ports.

The power delivery is controlled by the International Rectifier IR35201 digital PWM controller with IR3553M 40A MOSFETs supporting it with a wave of custom GIGABYTE solid ferrite chokes. Overclocking on the GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 is pretty straightforward, although GIGABYTE hasn’t included an external clock generator meaning that the base clock is automatically set by the BIOS. This isn’t great for overclockers, but for the purpose of usability, it can be construed a good all-around as the only options for overclocking include CPU core speed and memory via a multiplier.

While this board does not have a built-in Wi-Fi adapter, there are two physical gigabyte networking ports, powered by a gaming-focused Killer E2500 NIC (with the new updated software for network prioritization) and the Intel I211-AT Gigabit controller. The board features a total of eight temperature sensors including six onboard probes and two probe headers. Despite the gaming focus, there is also a basic onboard overclockers toolkit which includes a power switch, reset switch, reset CMOS switch and OC button. The board lacks any built-in voltage check points for extreme overclockers, although those users probably wouldn’t consider an X370 motherboard without an external clock generator anyway.

The GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 offers gamers enough features and software to satisfy the moniker gaming, but aside from multi-GPU support and a gaming network controller, but the board just feels like its lacking something for being the 2nd top X370 AM4 GIGABYTE offering. Nonetheless, for around $175 at Amazon, users will be hard pushed to find such a gaming-focused, RGB splashed, ATX option.

Planned Reviews

  • $260 - ASRock X370 Professional Gaming
  • $230 - ASRock X370 Taichi
  • $175 - GIGABYTE AX370-Gaming 5 [this review]
  • $120 - ASRock B350 Gaming K4
  • $110 - Biostar X370GTN [review]
  • $98 - MSI B350 Tomahawk

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