ASRock B550 Taichi Review: The $300 B550 Motherboard with Chutzpah
by Gavin Bonshor on August 21, 2020 3:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- ASRock
- Taichi
- AM4
- Ryzen 3000
- Ryzen 3700X
- Ryzen 4000
- B550
- B550 Taichi
CPU 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 put the memory settings at the CPU manufacturers suggested frequency, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
For B550 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1909 update.
Rendering - Blender 2.7b: 3D Creation Suite - link
A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.
Streaming and Archival Video Transcoding - Handbrake 1.1.0
A popular open source tool, Handbrake is the anything-to-anything video conversion software that a number of people use as a reference point. The danger is always on version numbers and optimization, for example the latest versions of the software can take advantage of AVX-512 and OpenCL to accelerate certain types of transcoding and algorithms. The version we use here is a pure CPU play, with common transcoding variations.
We have split Handbrake up into several tests, using a Logitech C920 1080p60 native webcam recording (essentially a streamer recording), and convert them into two types of streaming formats and one for archival. The output settings used are:
- 720p60 at 6000 kbps constant bit rate, fast setting, high profile
- 1080p60 at 3500 kbps constant bit rate, faster setting, main profile
- 1080p60 HEVC at 3500 kbps variable bit rate, fast setting, main profile
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing - 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 1-2 minutes on high-end platforms.
Compression – WinRAR 5.60b3: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. 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.
Synthetic – 7-Zip v1805: link
Out of our compression/decompression tool tests, 7-zip is the most requested and comes with a built-in benchmark. For our test suite, we’ve pulled the latest version of the software and we run the benchmark from the command line, reporting the compression, decompression, and a combined score.
It is noted in this benchmark that the latest multi-die processors have very bi-modal performance between compression and decompression, performing well in one and badly in the other. There are also discussions around how the Windows Scheduler is implementing every thread. As we get more results, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: 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 win 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.
Neuron Simulation - DigiCortex v1.20: link
The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. Results are taken during the steady-state period in a 32k neuron simulation and represented as a function of the ability to simulate in real time (1.000x equals real-time).
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Gigaplex - Wednesday, August 26, 2020 - link
The uncertainty certainly is annoying, but if I bought that board and then some time later had a need to install a PCIe x8 card, I'd be a bit frustrated.(I installed an LSI 9207-8i about a month ago on a motherboard I've had for >8 years, it was lucky I had an x16 slot free)
Tpoking - Saturday, August 22, 2020 - link
What's that old saying "Intel tax"? Try AMD tax only your getting less for more with this abomination and any AMD it's build over the past two months. Excuses with current event don't stick comparing the other way around. AMD is not value when considering anything but budget Matx boards and last Feb choosers.antonkochubey - Saturday, August 22, 2020 - link
Yeaaaah because Z490 boards (B550 is equivalent to Z490 - allows x8/x8 split, has PCIe 3.0, allows overclocking) can be found for $42 or for free on the side of the road /sSpunjji - Monday, August 24, 2020 - link
Great post, next time try adding some facts.Oxford Guy - Saturday, August 22, 2020 - link
Let's see...Midrange chipset at premium price, for no justifiable reason? Check.
Tons of VRM phases for CPUs that shouldn't even be overclocked? Check.
Excuses? Hmm...
antonkochubey - Sunday, August 23, 2020 - link
This midrange chipset matches Intel's highest-end chipset in it's feature set, and exceeds in some (PCIe 4.0 and CPU-direct first M.2).MrVibrato - Sunday, August 23, 2020 - link
I think it will be easier for you to use your fingers when counting PCI lanes.Spunjji - Monday, August 24, 2020 - link
The VRM thing really bugs me.lorribot - Sunday, August 23, 2020 - link
Why?Why 2.5GbE? No routers supplied by ISPs support this so yuo would need to spend a stack on a seperate switch. I am not entirely sure what the use case would be for 2.GbE and what sort of data would need to be transferred over that link. When there is also a top end WiFi 6 built in as well. One or other of these expensive features will be unused.
This board, like many of the B550 boards, makes no sense except in very few use cases, noise or heat, over an X570 based board that brings more future proofed support for PCI 4.
the top price for a B550 board should be around £/$70-100 and no more but there is massive shortage of boards in that price bracket.
A £/$75 board would give a good entry in to AM4 for those still on old Haswell/Broadwell CPUs still looking for a value upgrade path in the AMD productstack.
Gigaplex - Sunday, August 23, 2020 - link
I use 2.5GbE. Gigabit is the single biggest bottleneck for NAS speeds. I use a single SSD in my system, mass storage is on the NAS. I don't want a loud mechanical drive sitting right next to me. I also don't even have a switch, I connect the two endpoints directly.Switches aren't going to be commonly available at a low price until 2.5GbE is ubiquitous. For that to happen there's going to be a period of time where some people like you keep complaining about having faster ports with nothing to plug in to.
You want the cheap motherboards you're asking for? A520 is for you.