The Asus ROG Strix Z270G Gaming Motherboard Review
by E. Fylladitakis on October 3, 2017 8:15 AM ESTCPU 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 leave the BIOS settings at default and memory at JEDEC for these tests, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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DanNeely - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
Just to try and head the peanut gallery off at the pass. Based on something that either Ian or Ryan said a few days ago on twitter this should be the last board from the Z270 backlog.Gothmoth - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
take a look at the mainboard reviews here an anandtech and tell me anandtech is not biased.count the intel reviews then count the AMD reviews.
full reviews for intel boards and "overviews" for AMD boards.
and no, the reason is not that there are less AMD boards then intel boards.
why not at least review the few AMD boards that exist?
they rather preview Z270 boards then spending time on threadripper or AM4 boards.
while AMD sells better in europe than intel for the past 3 month.
Ian Cutress - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
We've got two AMD motherboard reviews being edited this week for next week. Our new motherboard review team, all of whom are in different corners of the world, is slowly coming up to speed. In case you didn't notice, E.Fyll has been doing our Z270 reviews this year and only Z270 - the other reviewers are taking on other chipsets - Joe for X299, Gavin for AM4. E.Fyll is likely to take TR4 now, and when Patrick gets back from his vacation, he's likely to take the Z370 content.MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
I'm looking forward to seeing more motherboard reviews :) I appreciate the quality contentFlunk - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
Since Anandtech doesn't buy the gear they review, they can only review whatever the manufacturer sends them. If ASUS sends them 4 Intel boards and one AMD board, that's what they review.smilingcrow - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
"while AMD sells better in europe than intel for the past 3 month."Is that based on the data for one webtailer or the whole of Europe?
For all CPUs or just a range?
I doubt that AMD currently have the capacity to supply that much of the retail market but if that's what they have done it's amazing.
Gothmoth - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
yeah i will buy Z270 now that Z370 is released in 2 days.....great job on doing timely reviews. tremendous job.
Ian Cutress - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
As per my tweet a few days ago, just getting the last ones out. The platform is still going to exist for a couple of years, with retail sales of both motherboards and processors. Reviews are still relevant.reckless76 - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
Just wanted to chime in since you're being forced to defend yourself, that I appreciate all your reviews, whenever they're posted. I'm not in the market for new parts now, but I have in the past and will be again in the future. Your site has always been an invaluable resource, so thank you.notR1CH - Wednesday, October 4, 2017 - link
I bought this board based only on the spec sheet when the 7700k came out as there were no reviews at the time. It's nice to know that I got a good board even if the review is late, in particular I had no idea the onboard audio was that good, I figured it was all just marketing.