The MSI X299 XPower Gaming AC Review: Flagship Fantasy
by Joe Shields on May 9, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- X299
- Basin Falls
- Skylake-X
- i9-7900X
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 GPU configuration with a wall meter connected to the Corsair HX 750 power supply. This power supply is Platinum rated. As I am in the US on a 120 V supply, leads to ~87% efficiency > 75W, and 92%+ efficiency at 375W, 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.
The power consumption tests for the MSI X299 XPower Gaming AC show it using a little more power than most of the boards we have tested so far idling at 81W in Windows and 77W while idle. The lions share of results are in the upper 60s to low 70s for long idle and lower 70s for the OS idle. The load results brought things back to about average at 214W, about the same as five other boards. Overall, power use was a bit higher on this board.
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 10 starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.
POST times on this board were just below 30 seconds leaving the XPower Gaming AC in the lower half of results. This result makes it the second quickest MSI board we have tested, however it is still in the lower third for boot times compared to the rest of the datasets.
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.
Our DPC Latency results are nothing extraordinary with another test sample fitting in notably under the 300-microsecond threshold. The X299 XPower Gaming AC showed 270 microseconds placing it in the bottom half of results.
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BPB - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
Sigh, I guess I can always dream about owning such an expensive board. But I can't imagine anybody who is budget conscious or not rich buying one. I wonder how MSI and the others sell enough boards like this to justify making them.Achaios - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
Unfortunately, the era of me dreaming of motherboards and CPU's passed long ago with no signs of returning. Nowadays, the only thing I usually dream of is East Asian fleshpots and lots and lots of ambitious girls in, out, on top and below. Do I miss the time my only interest in the world was my Pentium 4, my NVIDIA GO GPU with 128 megs of RAM and World of Warcraft? Sometimes yes but not really.WinterCharm - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
Hands down the funniest comment I’ve read on here in a long time :)Ket_MANIAC - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
And another great X299 review. Expecting at least a dozen more such reviews and expecting no review for any AM4 boards or X470 boards at all because who buys cheap stuff. Come on guys, is it really that hard? People already blame you guys to being Intel shills and all and reviews such as these only add fuel to their talk. Not that the review is bad but what reason could you have for this megaload of X299 reviews?rsandru - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
Agreed, X299 is going to be replaced soon anyway so even for potential Intel HEDT buyers all those motherboards are most likely non starters... And this one still sports the tiny VRM heat sink that was repeatedly pointed out as being insufficient.To round this perfectly marketed product there’s the ‘gaming’ in the name, as if anyone whose main interest is playing games would pick an X299 platform over a Z370.
Peter2k - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
You'd be surprised how many gamers where absolutely convinced they need quad channel and a bazillion pcie-x lanes for that sweet sweet quad GPU setup they gonna have one day so that they don't throttle when using many M2 SSD'sMarketing must be doing a great job these days
Surprisingly it's the sort of same amount of gamers that don't know that quad GPU setups are dead
Quad channel doesn't do anything for gaming (or most use cases anyway)
Ehh
As long as there are LED's on it
Ket_MANIAC - Thursday, May 10, 2018 - link
What I am baffled about is the lack of AM4 motherboard reviews from AnandTech. They are one of the few publications out here who do motherboard reviews right and just 6 reviews in over a year, out of which 3 are boards that no body ever buys when talking about AM4. Yes, they have covered a lot of Ryzen stuff lately. And motherboard reviews are generally not as important as CPU. But if that's the case, how do you justify "16" X299 reviews? And no X399? I might be coming of as an AMD fanboy, so hold your horses. I am an AMD fan. Not a fanboy. It doesn't take an Einstein to know which among the X299 and AM4 is more important and which among the X299 and X399 is more successful.DanNeely - Thursday, May 10, 2018 - link
Mobo Reviewer A is doing all of the x299 boards in a single giant batch.Mobo Reviewer B is doing all of the AM4 boards in a single giant batch.
The selection of boards they get to review come down to what manufactures send as press samples. There're enough of those to keep all the reviewers busy full time so Anandtech rarely if ever buys retail boards to review.
There currently isn't an active Mobo Reviewer C, so any x399 samples that've been sent in are waiting until A or B clears his current backlog; or one of the other contributors clears out the backlog of what they're currently working on and can step in on mobos again. (eg E. Fylladitakis did a batch of mobos last summer between his keyboard and PSU reviews.)
Ket_MANIAC - Thursday, May 10, 2018 - link
Quite alright but doesn't 16 X299 reviews seem to you as pointless? I don't know if you are representing Anandtech but if you are, don't you think more AM4 stuff would bring more readership to your website? You guys have the power to choose which boards you review among the ones that manufacturers send you and I don't think it is possible that Asus has never sent the Crosshair VI Hero or the VII Hero to you(from the CPU review, I see they had), ASRock never sent the X370 Taichi to you. Wouldn't reviewing these boards make more sense right now considering the 2000 series just launched?PeachNCream - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
It's another X299 MSI motherboard review, because we really need to hear more about MSI products since there are no other vendors out there that produce computer parts.