Motherboard Testing Methodology

Testing a motherboard is difficult. It is hard to provide solid statistics for what performance a motherboard increases or sustains. With more and more sub-components controlled by the CPU, the amount of difference a motherboard makes in performance tests is becoming negligible. That is precisely why manufacturers are beginning to focus on additional features to add value to their motherboards.

For the testing portion of this article, I tested the ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX killer using the FX-8370, FX-8370E and FX9590 CPUs. I also tested the Steamroller based Kaveri A10-7850K APU, which I found to be an excellent value earlier this year, using the ASUS A88X Pro motherboard. Finally, I crossed over and used the Biostar HiFi Z78X motherboard, paired with the i5-4670, to round out the testing.

The i5-4670 matches up pretty closely in price to the FX-9590, so the match-up should give us a good indication of how the two compare. That being said, we aren’t really looking at the two CPUs in this article.

FM2+ Test System

• Motherboards: ASUS A88X Pro
• Processor: AMD A10-7850K
• System Memory: 8GB AMD Radeon DDR3 2400MHz
• Disk Drive: Seagate 1TB SSHD ST1000LM014
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Video Card: XFX R9-280X
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Intel Test System

• Motherboard: Biostar HiFi Z87X
• Processor: Intel Core i5-4670
• System Memory: 8GB AMD Radeon DDR3 2400MHz
• Disk Drive: Seagate 1TB SSHD ST1000LM014
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Video Card: XFX R9-280X
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

AMD 990FX Test System

• Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer
• Processors: AMD FX-8370; AMD FX-8370E; AMD FX-9590
• System Memory: 8GB AMD Radeon DDR3 2400MHz
• Disk Drive: Seagate 1TB SSHD ST1000LM014
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Video Card: XFX R9-280X
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Compute Benchmarks

• AIDA 64
• SiSoftware Sandra 2014
• Cinebench R15