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Review: MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC Wifi

by Tarinder Sandhu on 1 May 2018, 14:00

Tags: MSI, AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qadszy

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Test Methodology

Comparison Motherboard Configurations

Model
MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC Wifi
Aorus X470 Gaming 7 Wifi
Asus Maximus X Hero
Firmware Version
1.10
T2b
1101
Chipset
X470
Z370
CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
Intel Core i7-8700K
CPU Cores / Threads
8 / 16
6 / 12
CPU Base Clock / Turbo
4.2GHz all-core
3.7GHz / 4.3GHz
4.0GHz / 4.7GHz
CPU TDP
105W
91W
Memory
Corsair 32GB (4x8GB)
Memory Speed
DDR4-3200
DDR4-2933
DDR4-2666
Memory Timings
16-18-18-38-1T
Graphics
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Graphics Driver
GeForce 391.25
Storage Device(s)
SK hynix Canvas SC300 512GB
WD Black NVMe M.2 1TB
Power Supply
be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 (1,000W)
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 1709 (64-bit)

CPU Benchmarks

HEXUS PiFast Our number-crunching benchmark stresses a single core by calculating Pi to 10m places.
Cinebench R15 Using Cinebench's multi-CPU render, this cross-platform benchmark stresses all cores.
Handbrake 1.0 Free-to-use video encoder that stresses all CPU cores.

Storage Benchmarks

CrystalDiskMark Popular free-to-use storage benchmark, used to gauge read and write performance via M.2 (1TB WD Black NVMe), SATA (512GB SK hynix Canvas SC300) and USB 3.1 (512GB SK hynix Canvas SC300).

Memory Benchmarks

AIDA64 v5.80 Benchmark that analyses memory bandwidth and latency.

Gaming Benchmarks

3DMark Time Spy Graphics benchmark run using the Time Spy test.
F1 2017 1,920x1,080, ultra settings.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War 1,920x1,080, ultra settings.

Miscellaneous Benchmarks

Power Consumption Noted at idle, while running the HandBrake video-transcoding test and when playing Far Cry 5.

Notes

At the time of testing, both platforms had up-to-date protection against Spectre and Meltdown threats.

There is little point in comparing the default performance of the MSI to the Aorus X470 board. Reason? They don't just produce similar results; they are identical - 1,813 in Cinebench and within 0.2s in the four-minute-long Blender examination.

This is why we have chosen to run the MSI at what we deem reasonable overclocked settings, comprising an all-core CPU speed of 4.2GHz using 1.45V and memory at DDR4-3,200 speeds. It's not a huge overclock, of course, because Ryzen has a lower ceiling than, say, Core i7-8700K.