Civilization V

Civilization V is a strategy video game that utilizes a significant number of the latest GPU features and software advances.  Using the in-game benchmark, we run Civilization V at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings, similar to Ryan in his GPU testing functionality.  Results reported by the benchmark are the total number of frames in sixty seconds, which we normalize to frames per second.

Civilization V - One 7970Civilization V - Two 7970Civilization V - Three 7970Civilization V - Four 7970

Civilization V - One 580Civilization V - Two 580

For Civilization V, the ROG boards get ahead at 2560x1440 when more GPU power is under the hood - this means two or more AMD cards, or any number of NVIDIA cards.  Note that Civilization V does not scale well with AMD, but the X79 platform is best suited to deal with this situation.

Dirt 3

Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters.  Using the in game benchmark, Dirt 3 is run at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings.  Results are reported as the average frame rate across four runs.

Dirt 3 - One 7970Dirt 3 - Two 7970Dirt 3 - Three 7970Dirt 3 - Four 7970

Dirt 3 - One 580Dirt 3 - Two 580

Similarly to Civilization V, the ROG boards perform best when more GPU power is in the system for Dirt 3.  Dirt 3 scales very well with GPU power and loves memory bandwidth, so for two or more 7970s (or any number of NVIDIA cards), the ROG boards pull ahead (even if only by the most minute of percentages).

Metro2033

Metro2033 is a DX11 benchmark that challenges every system that tries to run it at any high-end settings.  Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings.  Results are given as the average frame rate from 10 runs.

Metro2033 - One 7970Metro2033 - Two 7970Metro2033 - Three 7970Metro2033 - Four 7970

Metro2033 - One 580Metro2033 - Two 580

Metro 2033 seems unbothered by which platform is used - only by what GPUs are being used.

Computation Benchmarks A Byword About 4-way 7970 Scaling on X79
Comments Locked

34 Comments

View All Comments

  • jontech - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link

    But sounds kind of cool,.

    Helps that Asus makes it :)
  • Paulman - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link

    Asus Republic of Gamers also holds Starcraft tournaments, as well! That's how I first heard of their brand. In fact, the ASUS ROG Starcraft II Summer 2012 tournament is on right now and I'm watching a game vs. EG.IdrA and EG.Puma (same team, but one American teammate versus a Korean teammate).

    For more info on this tourney, see: http://rog.asus.com/142982012/gaming/join-the-rog-...
  • primeval - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link

    A fun tournament thus far.

    For the branding portion of this article, I highly recommend checking out some of ASUS ROG's commercials. They have been playing throughout the aforementioned tournament and I have to say they are probably the best hardware commercials I have ever seen in terms of production quality. I think that if you see a few of those commercials, you may be able to further rationalize the branding award.
  • Meaker10 - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link

    1x/16x/8x/16x would kill any dual card setup in a micro atx case, kinda defeating the point....
  • just4U - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link

    the 8x slot is rather pointless...
  • danjw - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link

    I would rather see an article on the Ivybridge ROG motherboards then the Sandybridge-E ones. These are very niche boards, though I guess that is only slightly less true of the Ivybridge boards. For heavily threaded and memory intensive applications Sandybridge-E will win. But not really on much else, though they are chosen by some just because they are the most expensive.
  • StevoLincolnite - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link

    Also, Sandy Bridge overclocks higher and throws out less heat, because of the silly design choice that Intel made in regards to the heat spreader compound.

    Not a problem for those who are up to the task of removing the IHS or lapping.
    Sad part is that Ivy Bridge actually has nice thermals and power consumption at stock; which could have translated well for enthusiasts.

    IvyBridge-E should be out within the next year, haswell will get released and the cycle shall continue.
    Hopefully we get 8 core Ivybridge-E chips, which is severely lacking on the Socket 2011 platform with the 3930K's being die harvested 8 core chips, plus most socket 2011 motherboards will take an Ivybridge-e chip anyway, when they're released.
  • danjw - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link

    I was just looking at "leaked" slide that shows Ivy Bridge-E out in Q3 2013 and Haswell out in Q2 2013. I really don't see what the point is of an Ivy Bridge-E if Haswell beats it to the market. With Sandy Bridge-E they released it before the Ivy Bridge tock. I just don't see why that would make much sense.
  • Assimilator87 - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link

    Haswell will probably be limited to four cores, whereas Ivy Bridge-E will scale up to ten cores.
  • mapesdhs - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link

    I was hunting for R4E refs and found this. It's strange reading what people expected was going to happen back when the R4E was new. IB-E with 10 cores eh? Oh well. Mind you, that did happen with IB-EP, and infact the XEON E5-2680 v2 is one of the best upgrades one can do for an X79 mbd, at least for threaded performance anyway. Hard to avoid wondering how things would have panned out if the 3930K had simply been a fully functional 8-core in the first place, instead of the crippled sampled chip consumers were offered. However, I obtained quite a few, and they still work pretty well, especially with so many PCIe lanes to play with, and it's cool being able to use a 950 Pro to boot from NVMe (comes with its own boot ROM), though the ROG forum does have a thread with custom BIOS profiles available to add native NVMe boot support to various ASUS mbds.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now